Days of Pretending
by 247Lyricism
Summary: Explores the relationship between Peter and Mary Jane after the Spider-man movie. It has a high romance factor, high angst factor, and is lyrical. Be warned that Chapter 3 approaches a perhaps "unmentionable topic" concerning intimacy in relationships.
1. Dying

**Category: Spider-man Fan-fiction******

**Genre: Romance/Angst******

**Language: English (bet you couldn't tell!)******

**Rating: PG-13 for mild swearing, romantic content, and dramatic situations**

**Summary: Explores the relationship between Peter and Mary Jane after the Spider-man movie. It has a high romance factor, high angst factor, and is lyrical, as usual.**

**~~~**

**Days of Pretending**

_Chapter 1: Dying _

Peter Parker was a photographer, a superhero, a young man. He was a brunette, a student, and a law-enforcer. He was quiet, speechless, intelligent, and a loner. But, most of all, he was a heartbreaker. 

He had never considered himself to be a heartbreaker. After all, he was not extremely beautiful, extremely popular, or extremely talented. He was a nerd who could ramble off math equations easily and once wore the thickest-rimmed glasses in the world. He was no sharp dresser, no quick-witted, charming jock, nor a charming flirt, for that matter. Peter instead wore jeans and t-shirts and sometimes sweaters and a sad, lost smile that told the world that he didn't think he belonged. 

But, despite all that, Peter was a heartbreaker, because he had broken the spirit of the woman he loved the most on the hardest day of his life: the funeral of his best friend's father. It had been a tearful, sad occasion, filled with crying and confessions and prayers and more crying still. 

Peter did not like to remember that day. He did not like to look back on his friend's pale face, streaked with tears, tissues bulging out of his pockets, face grim. He did not like to see Mary Jane, her wild red hair sticking to the wetness on her cheeks, her voice screaming out for him. He did not like to return to his uncle's grave and stare at it for long, tragic moments and want to dive in the earth with the rotting body. He did not like to watch the coffin go down into the earth, sinking away from them forever. 

Peter left that day in a passionate fury, aching to get away from that sight. He hated graveyards.

He spent the night rather sleeplessly. His slumber was interrupted numerous times by little thumps in the apartments surrounding his, the creaking building, water dripping, and so on. The brief moments when Peter did sleep were constantly haunted by family members who had been dead for a year and best friends who had lost their humanity and goblins, laughing and screaming with their claws outstretched, taking his life away. It was one of those nights when time couldn't move any slower, when he felt like he was a waste. Dawn came, and the light gave him no comfort. It only let him see his tearstained face in the mirror. Another day began. It was the second hardest day of Peter's life. He was tired, hopeless, and depressed. 

Peter had never felt so sickly, so weak. He was recovering deep inside of him from death, on the outside from cuts and bruises and moments when he had thought he might die. He was lethargic all day and hardly fell out of bed. The shower burned his scalding hot skin, and the windows fogged up, and it made him feel swollen and inflated, as though he had been filled with some sort of acidic hate, some horrible suffering. 

Classes were endless, work was endless, life was endless. He had never felt so out of himself before in his entire existence.

It was also the day that Mary Jane called.  He had seen her name on the caller ID. He had felt fear swell up and choke his throat upon seeing her last name on the machine, the letters that had lingered on his brain for years, the letters he was supposed to hate but could only love. _Why does love hurt?" he asked, picking it up with a shaky hand._

"Hello," he said softly. 

Her voice was strained on the telephone. "Peter?" she rasped tersely.

"Mary Jane?" Peter asked her, suddenly unsure if the machine was malfunctioning. She sounded so sad, so broken, so fragile and charred. Peter's eyes danced around the room as he felt his innards twist. He was frightened of what he may have done to her. Was it his fault that she sounded to be dying quietly?

"Yeah. It's me. Hi," Mary Jane said softly. Her hands were trembling on the other side of the city. She wrung a tissue to keep herself moving so she couldn't see the shudder, the convulsing fingers. She didn't like to see herself like that. 

"You sound awful," he whispered breathlessly. How could he have been so stupid to let her go?

"Yeah, I do, don't I?" she laughed nervously. "I've just been upset, you know. A lot has happened to me lately, you know? There was the… the World Unity festival, and the kidnapping, and then the funeral today, and then there was you and…well, it hasn't been a very good few weeks. I've had a lot of nightmares, you know, done too much daydreaming." 

"I'm sorry. I know it's partially my fault," Peter told her sympathetically as his heart ripped open. He was bleeding inside. He was spilling over, less of a man.__

"Don't be sorry. You were honest," she answered him. Her mind and heart rebelled against her overly calm words. _I am a liar. I want you to be sorry, to pity me, to give up whatever grudge you hold against me for having your heart. Let go of yourself and love me._

There was an awkward, tense quiet moment. They both hated times like those, when all was too still for comfort. The only sound was that weird hum of the telephone, the one that made you know you ought to say something. 

"Why did you call, Mary Jane?" Peter asked, breaking the sound of silence.

She paused briefly. "I want you to reconsider me, Peter."

_Oh, sweet God, Mary Jane. Don't do this to me. I want you, but I can't have you, he thought. "Mary Jane, I'm sorry. We went over this," he said softly, kindly, much too patiently. Strings inside of him started to snap, each one plucking like a sad, lone violin by itself in a field full of crickets. A part of him died to think that he meant so much to her, and, yet, he had to mean less._

"But I know you love me," she persisted. "I know more than you think I do."

"You really think so?" he asked in a weird tone, hiding the anxiousness under his skin.

"I know so. You don't understand, Peter. I didn't sleep last night. I did a lot of thinking. And I think…well, honestly, I think you're hiding a few things. You know, it's one of those things that you just are sure about, and you know you're right," she explained in a firm, rather disoriented voice. She felt dizzy, and helpless, and like she couldn't live if he didn't take her.

"Mary Jane, really, I don't think you're thinking straight today," Peter warned, feeling his stomach twist and churn weirdly. "I can't love you." _My heart is black._

_Take it back, please, she thought in a passion.__ "But that doesn't mean you don't, Peter," Mary Jane said bluntly. She threw the tissue she had been holding and missed the wastebasket. She wanted to bawl on her floor and just sit there for the rest of time. ___

He didn't reply. He just sat there, dumbfounded. His face was blank. 

"Answer me, Peter. Do you or don't you?" she said in the coldest voice he had ever heard. At first, he mistook the sound for anger. But he realized it was fear and tears that distorted her voice and made him not know her.

"I do," he said quietly. "As a friend…" 

"Honestly, Peter!" she cried out, and she smashed down the phone.

~~~ 

AN: Hope you liked it! Please review. This will be a chapter story, so keep checking back to it if you like it (or if you just want to review and criticize; I am open to that!). I have actually already written both chapters 8 and 9, the ending to the story. Hopefully this will be a help because usually I never really know quite where I'm going with my fan-fiction! Now I have a definite beginning and ending so I can just fill in the blanks, and I actually know how the heck I'm going to do that. All in all, the story is turning out pretty well so far and I'm quite proud. *beams* 

What fueled me to write this story? Well, I was thinking (what else is new?) and I was flipping an idea around in my head. I have read a handful of stories where MJ finds out Peter's secret, they hook up, and live happily ever. I am not saying these stories are bad, because they are so very wonderful and beautiful, and I have written them myself. However, what I was thinking is, "What's to say that if they did get together their relationship would work out perfectly fine? What if their relationship was faulty and full of holes?" It was an idea that really solidified in my head, because, though I am extremely romantic and it would be a great ending, trial is very much expected, isn't it always? Thus, "Days of Pretending" came into existence. Now that you know that, I guess you can anticipate some, huh? 

Again, please review, because feedback is what really keeps me rolling. Thanks so much, and I hope you enjoyed "Days of Pretending!"


	2. Just A Coincidence

**Days of Pretending**

_Chapter 2:  Just a Coincidence_

Three weeks passed slower than molasses dripping. Three weeks were all too slow for Peter Parker. Three weeks led to nowhere, to nothing, to a dead future. Three weeks of papers written, of being smitten, of helplessness. 

Three weeks later found him wandering the streets with nothing in mind, because his home was too dreary and full of sympathy flowers for Harry. He didn't have a thought in his head, only a blackness in his gut. There was a café on the corner, a sad red diner, which he was familiar with. Why had his legs carried him to the place where Mary Jane worked? He knew he shouldn't go in.

He stood on the outside, watching. Peter stepped up to the glass and peered inside. Perhaps she wasn't working then. His face pressed against the window. The place was crowded with the late afternoon eaters who liked to have a snack after work at the cheapest place they could stomach. He saw three waitresses running around, their expressions frantic, anticipation for the end of the shift lingering behind their faces. He did not recognize any of them; he saw no red hair, no glorious smile, no haunted eyes.  _It's safe, then, he told himself, and went inside._

A tired young girl yawned and pointed him to a table right by the window, where he could see the city smog rising up out of the sewers. The place smelled like grease and ashes; it made him not so hungry anymore. He glanced at the menu, feeling sicker and sicker by the moment as he wondered why MJ worked there. Peter perused it thoughtlessly, feeling a strange prickling at the back of his neck, as though he were being watched, or like something very important was going to happen.

His eyes lifted. Out of the dirty smoke came an angel with a red halo and a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. Her coat flapped in the breeze and her hair rustled. She looked like she was fragmented. She kept walking out of the crowd, away from everything, her eyes searching for something more. Oblivious to his presence, she stared lifelessly through the window to inside her workplace. She was seeing long hours ahead, grumpy customers, her foul, greedy boss. It was then when she was lost in her nightmare that she noticed a patron watching her with curiosity and some other unnamable emotion. 

_Peter, Mary Jane thought with surprise. __Waiting for me? Why is he here? What does he want? …Is it possible that maybe he just wanted something to eat, and came coincidentally here? Her mind refused to think of his presence as a sheer accident. He was beginning to wonder the same. _

Their eyes met through the glass. There was tension in the stare. It was relief, yet, it was anxiety. Questions poured like waterfalls; pain mixed with joy and hesitation and sheer wonder. Mary Jane took a step closer and subsequently laid her hand gently on the window pane to his left. _Oh, God. Mary Jane, what are you now? he thought to himself._

"Hi," she said quietly. Peter could not hear what Mary Jane, but he saw her mouth it. That wasn't enough. He wanted to hear her voice, to smell her, to taste her. He placed his own hand opposite hers on the glass, but the glass was cool and it did not warm his soul. 

Sad eyes met a similar pair. "Hi," he mouthed back to her across the window pane. He beckoned to her to come inside. He felt weird, as if everything was backwards. Why was she on the outside, when she was usually in his place? Peter couldn't understand. 

Mary Jane nodded and vanished from his sight. He fidgeted in his seat to see her gone. _Suppose she doesn't come in after all? he thought, challenging his own security. Peter shook the thought from his brain._

Mary Jane pushed open the diner's door and waded through the masses into the back room, where she threw her coat and purse unceremoniously. She plopped down onto a cheap plastic bench and felt her pulse. Yes, it was racing. _Not a coincidence, she told herself. She buried her face deep into her hands, wanting to disappear. God, how she loved him! How she adored him, patronized him, worshipped him! And how cold it was to hear him turn her down!_

She knew that she had to face the facts. Peter could not love her, for some weird reason she couldn't understand. Maybe it was the fact that he was afraid, having never been loved before. But neither had she, really, and she wanted it so badly. Why was he so hesitant and childish in his resistance? But perhaps that wasn't it. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that he was Spider-man.

Mary Jane had been blind to Peter's identity. But the gauze over her eyes had been lifted after kissing him in the cemetery and knowing his taste was that of a Spider. 

_What does his other side have to do with not loving me?  she questioned herself, rubbing her eyes.  She sighed, confused. __There's something I don't know. And I hate it. It's crawling under my skin. But if he can fake it cold, so can I. If he wants to pretend there is nothing, so can __I.__ Determined, she stood, fiddled with the collar of her uniform, and snatched a notepad. _

Mary Jane was on duty now. If his duty prevented him from loving her, then hers would have to prevent her from loving him.

A very long minute later, Peter saw Mary Jane advancing from the throngs of people in the diner. She didn't look like herself in her uniform, the ugly suit. She seemed conformed, abused, limited that way, like she couldn't express herself.

Professionally, she came up to Peter's table. "Hello," she said to him in her most businesslike voice. "What do you want today?" She pulled out her notepad and started to jot down some notes. 

He gaped at her, surprised by her harshness. How could she? Why would she? He saw everything they had been flushed down the drain.  _No. Don't let me lose her all together. "You," Peter choked out, losing all his control at the mention of it in his mind. Immediately he clapped his hand over his mouth. __Stupid! Stupid! _

Mary Jane's hands trembled. The notepad fell to the floor. She muttered something in a seemingly careless, disgruntled manner, and bent down to retrieve it, though her eyes reflected serious fear. 

"What are you doing?" Peter whispered to her while she was kneeling. Her face lifted up and her gaze met his own.

"I have a job to do, just like you," she said in a quiet tone.

"Fine," he said harshly, hating himself. Was this her payback? Did she mean to hurt him? Why was she so vengeful? After all, all Peter had done was broken her heart and destroyed every bit of faith she had in the world. "I'll have a cup of coffee." 

"Okay. I'll be back," she said coolly, leaving him alone. She made her way through the other waitresses to the back of the kitchen, where she poured some scalding hot coffee into a white mug. She wiped her tears. _Why am I doing this? What makes me think that this will help? Can't you see, dumb girl, that he's already upset? What makes you think that making him more upset will bring him crawling back to you? You can't toy with Peter like you did with the other boys you've been with! He's not like the other ones! And that's why you love him, Mary Jane, she thought to herself, as if her heart was having a conversation with her brain._

She nearly spilled the coffee as she stumbled back out to the dining area. Peter's back was to her as she approached his booth. Mary Jane could see the top of his head, his hair, his coat slung across the back. She was nearly running. She put down the coffee mug harshly, splattering a little onto the table. "I'm sorry," she rasped, collapsing into the booth next to Peter. 

He jumped at her sudden motion. "What?" 

She choked out a few broken words. "I'm so sorry… for being so mean to you, as if it would help… you're not like the rest… it's not your fault, even, is it, Peter?" The coffee was forgotten, her shift unimportant, the future wiped away like chalk on a blackboard. 

"What isn't my fault?" he asked her, confused. He wanted to hold her and make her stop crying, but he couldn't. _I can't, I can't, he reminded himself. _

"It's not your fault… that you can't love me," Mary Jane answered with a slight hiccup. 

_I can't. But how did you know? Peter swallowed back a huge lump in his throat. "No, no, it's not," he said without thinking of consequences and questions that might be asked in response and where he was going tomorrow. _

"I don't understand you. I don't understand why you can't trust me and tell me things and why I have to figure everything out for myself. You're confusing," she said to him with a sniffle. She wiped her eyes childishly. "I'm sorry for crying." 

He didn't know what to say to that. What did she say about figuring things out for herself? Peter did nothing but reach over to the napkin dispenser at the end of the table, yank out a few of the substitute tissues, and hand them to her. Mary Jane took them gratefully and wiped her face while Peter puzzled over what she was saying to him. Now he was confused, too. 

_I'm tired of being confused. I'm tired of not knowing what could be. I'm tired of tension, tired of hate, tired of indifference, tired of being Spider-man. I just want to be myself with Mary Jane. I just want everything to go away, he thought passionately. _

Mary Jane crumbled the cheap paper product in her fist. "I don't want to get up and get back to work." 

"Then don't."

"Can I just stay here with you?" she asked, pleadingly, tossing the napkin back onto the table.

"As long as we can talk," he said. "I'm fed up with what's been going on." His eyebrows contracted in his fury with God. 

"So am I," she echoed, leaning closer to him. She didn't have to put her fingers to her wrist to know that her pulse was going haywire. "I want to know everything. I want to know what's been going on with you. I want to know."

"I-" Peter started to say, but he swallowed his words. "I was going to say that I can't tell you everything, but you already know that." He glanced up at her. "You know a lot, don't you? You know a lot more than I think you do, even now." 

"Yes. Yes, I'd like to think I've got everything figured out; I know every little thing except for when it comes to you yourself." Her eyes lowered. "I know all of the what's and the when's, but none of the why's." Mary Jane bit her lower lip anxiously. "I understand everything but your mind."

"Tell me," Peter said encouragingly. "What do you know?" What was she hinting at? _She doesn't know about Spider-man, does she? She couldn't. No one knows about him. _

She looked around her suspiciously. Peter cocked his head at her, baffled. Mary Jane leaned in to his ear, cupping her hand around it. If his breath hadn't been caught somewhere between heaven and hell, he might have squealed. "I know who you are-" she breathed. Peter didn't know if it was the sensation of her exhalation on his ear or what she actually said that made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. "-Spider-man." 

He jerked away from her. "You don't know that," he said, scatterbrained. "You don't have any proof. What makes you think you're right?"

"The way you deny it!" she responded immediately. "If it wasn't true, you wouldn't be so defensive, would you?" He had no answer to her. Mary Jane sighed and raked her fingers through her hair. "Look, Peter, you don't have to make this harder than it is. If I know, I know. Don't fight me."

Peter leaned back onto the booth's plumpness. His head dropped back. "How did you know?" he said, feeling defeated. 

"You kiss like him," she responded simply. Peter couldn't help but to smile and raise his head and look at her. The gaze in her eyes was penetrating, provocative. _Prove it. Show me again. How do you kiss, Peter? Is it really just like him? How do I really know? I need to be sure, so kiss me again, Peter. Kiss me, she thought, as if she could speak to him telepathically. His cheeks flamed red and he looked away at the cooling coffee that he had forgotten all about. Haphazardly he dragged a finger across the edge of the mug. He licked the corners of his lips. _

She swallowed hard. "It's not the end of the world that I know. I'm not going to tell anyone," she said to him. 

"I know you wouldn't."

Mary Jane took his hand in her own hand. "I know that much. I know a lot of things now just from that: why you're busy a lot, why you're secretive. But it doesn't tell me why you can't love me." 

"And what makes you think that I love you?" he challenged her.

"Stop fighting this. We both know the truth of that matter here. You've slipped one too many times, making little mistakes, like watching me when you think I'm not paying attention, or the way you always just happen to be there. Those things were not coincidences." She laced their fingers together. "And neither was the way you kissed me. There was emotion behind it. Kisses don't lie." 

His lips trembled. _Kiss her. Show her. She knows. Give in, even if you don't want to. Give in to her. Please, just do it, or I might just go insane. Kiss her. Kiss her, show her, need her, love her like you've wanted to all of your life. Good God, do it, his insides pleaded. _

Mary Jane couldn't resist. "Don't lie to me," she said warningly before planting her lips on his own.

Peter started to melt very, very slowly. This was everything they both wanted. It started to warm his soul and liquefy his passion into metallic strength. He gave in to his desire. Neither could hold back. Her taste, her smell, the way she moved – he had forgotten these things. They came back to him quickly, and he rediscovered them again and again. 

Someone whistled. They jumped back from each other, but their hands were still linked; Mary Jane saw a male coworker wink at her as he passed her by with a few drinks. Her cheeks burned with anger and passion. Why was she crying? It wasn't embarrassment. It wasn't fear or dislike. Was it longing? 

Mary Jane looked at Peter's blinking, startled face and knew that he still wasn't really hers. They had kissed, and they loved each other, but did that amend everything? She still didn't know him enough. She was still confused; she didn't understand why they couldn't kiss like that some more. _He loves me. Why can't I have him? _

His hand squeezed hers. "I knew I would end up hurting you," he said softly. "But I didn't think that I would hurt you this much." 

"I love you. It hurts a lot," she answered honestly. "I want to kiss you again. But I can't do it, because it's all in vain. I just can't get through. I still don't know why you can't love me, why I can't be with you. You can't tell me everything. I'm supposed to respect that, but I can't." 

Peter didn't know anything anymore. He seemed to be forgetting all the reason that had compelled him to lie to her, to hide from her. "What if I change my mind?" When Mary Jane looked even more puzzled, he repeated, "What if I change my mind about being with you?" 

Mary Jane's entire insides leapt. "I would go with you, if you could tell me what made you change your mind." 

Peter nodded and put an arm around her, hugging her to his chest. She liked that, so she might listen to the steady rhythm of his heart beating. His throat trembled when he spoke. "I knew all along that you would get hurt. I am not an easy man to deal with. I am always away, always busy." His tone lowered. "Spider-man is even harder to deal with. He takes no chances. He is too paranoid. He was afraid you would be more hurt with me than without me." 

"I don't understand," she told his shirt. She felt like she was speaking directly to his heart. She could hear its genuine thumping, the gentle pattering, the way it sounded just like her own. If she listened hard enough, could she find out all of Peter's secrets? Did she want to find them all out, anyways? She wanted to know him. She wanted to become a part of him. Heck, she just plain wanted him.

"Spider-man lives a dangerous life. He didn't want you to fall into it, too," Peter answered. "He wanted to protect you. But in shielding you, he hurt you more, didn't he?" 

"Yes. He did. You did." She craned her neck up to his face. "But what makes you think I wasn't willing to risk that? Why couldn't you have let me make that decision for myself?"

He didn't know. "Maybe I didn't think you would make the right choice. Maybe I was too protective. Maybe I just didn't think of that. Maybe I like control. I don't know. I don't remember." 

"It's okay," she assured him, running her hand down the buttons on the front of his shirt. His chest tightened and his heart quivered at the touch. _Take off with me, he thought in a begging manner. __I want to be alone with you to catch up on the parts of our lives that we missed. "Let's get out of here," he suggested. _

Mary Jane frowned. "I'm on my shift. I can't leave." 

Peter frowned with her. "How long will you be?" 

"Two hours. Today is my light day," she responded with a half-smile. 

"I'll wait for you," he responded immediately.

"Don't you have something else to do?" Mary Jane asked him. 

"Maybe. I don't know. Whatever it is, it can wait. I've been waiting for you long enough that whatever I'm giving up is worth it," Peter told her with a smirk. 

Mary Jane grinned at him, drinking in his whole self. "Tell me something, Peter," she whispered, drawing her mouth close to his ear again, pulling her beautiful self in her ugly red uniform against him, because she liked touching him. His arms surrounded her, feeling her form to be solid and real. It felt so good to hold her, to feel her, to know she was present. 

"I'll tell you anything," he replied in all honesty, burying his face into her shoulder. He had never smelled something like her in all his life. She smelled like flowers, like heaven, like eternity, like everything he had ever yearned to become. 

"I want to hear you say that you love me, because you haven't said it yet," she said. 

_Is that all? he thought. __That's all I have to say? But he found himself choking on the words a little. He had never expected to actually say them to her face. It was something he had never been able to picture as real. "I love you, Mary Jane," he told her. _

She almost started to cry again. She was never an emotional person, not this much. But, then again, this was Peter Parker, and he was something amazing, and something worth crying over. She threw her face into his shoulder and muffled the sobs that threatened to leak out from the corners of her mouth. "Thank you," she said softly. "I love you." 

"Miss Watson!" cried a perturbed voice. "Miss Watson, get to table two, pronto! What are you doing?" Gathering her dignity, Mary Jane untangled herself from Peter and looked up at her bitter boss, who leaned on the table looking both annoyed and amused. 

"What do you think I'm doing?" she said, sticking out her chin and tripping out of the booth as gracefully as one could trip. "I was saying goodbye to my boyfriend Peter, that's all." 

The word "boyfriend" connected to Peter's name send a shiver straight up her spine. Peter's eyes widened a little at the sound of it. He was her boyfriend. How many years had he been waiting to hear her say that? Ideally, he hadn't wanted to hear it first while Mary Jane explained why she was snuggling up to a boy instead of serving burgers, but that was alright anyways. Mary Jane straightened out her shirt collar, wiped her eyes a little, and threw her hair over her shoulder.

"Yeah, well, unless he's buying something, he's got to go," said the pudgy owner of the diner. He made a shooing motion with his fat hands that jiggled when they moved.

Peter picked him his now cold mug of coffee and lifted it. "Cheers," he offered charmingly. 

The man snorted, not entertained. "You have two hours. Get to it," he said, jerking a thumb to Mary Jane. Mary Jane rolled her eyes at him and peered at Peter, flashing him a quick smile. 

Two hours were spent interestingly. Peter sipped his cold coffee very slowly. He prolonged it for the whole time he was there, somehow. He spent it watching Mary Jane jump across the room with trays in her hand, wiping up counters, and giving crayons to little children. It fascinated him to what she put up with to keep herself in one piece. She made him proud, in a way, and, yet, Peter wished she didn't have to. He wished she was in his apartment right then, curled up under a blanket with him, munching potato chips, in his arms. Whenever Mary Jane got the chance, she would run over to him only to smile at him or grab his hand or wink at him to sustain her through the time. It was like a forbidden romance, dodging the glares of the boss who didn't pay for girls who spent time flirting with customers.

The sun fell. The shift ended. Peter slammed down the money at the register and waited at the door for Mary Jane to get her coat and purse.  He leaned against the doorframe turned his face to the clear glass doors, watching the city's lights start to flicker on. The doors opened periodically as new patrons entered the diner. The open doors let in little breezes to muss his already disarranged hair. Mary Jane emerged from the back room; he did not notice. She watched Peter standing there with his arms folded, leaning against the frame, his jeans wrinkled, one foot propped up. The green of his shirt caught the colors in his eyes, and the way his hair was out of place just made him seem more original, more of her own. His gaze was distant; he was obviously thinking. Something about him made a weird, enchanted feeling well up in her. He looked like a boy becoming a man, like someone who wasn't sure of things and didn't like to pretend, like a human being just trying to make his way around the city in the best possible manner. Mary Jane liked to think that the best way for him was with her.

"Peter," she said. He turned, and the color rose to his cheeks. His arms came undone. 

"Hi," he said with a smile. There was a romance in her eyes, in her face. She just lit up as she stood before him, even in that stupid uniform. A stray wind tugged at her hair. "Ready?" he asked her with a faint chuckle.

Mary Jane nodded, advanced, and took his hand. "I've been ready," she said. 

"Me, too," Peter agreed, running his thumb across the lines on her hand. He bent down to rest his forehead against hers and then subsequently kissed Mary Jane softly. The streetlamps and car headlights danced behind their silhouettes. His lips broke from hers briefly and he whispered, "C'mon." When he spoke, his lips brushed against hers, and the sound of his voice mixed with her breath and smelled sweet. Mary Jane smiled a little before pecking his lips lightly and leading Peter away. 

~~~ 

AN: Yay! This chapter was much longer, and better! *squeals with delight* Hurray for 5 and half pages! I am very sorry that the last one was so short, but I needed to save a lot for this chapter. The next chapter should be longer, if I have things my way. 

If any of you didn't believe me when I said there would be lots of romance, I hope I proved you wrong, because this was a pretty darned mushy chapter. I tried to be as emotional and angst-filled as usual. (I have been dubbed the Queen of Angst, eh?) 

Please feel free to comment. To those of you who have already made your comments, go ahead and review both chapters! Why not? Thanks to everyone who reviewed. You are all so sweet and generous to bestow such compliments on me. 

Chapter 3 is next! *grins* And there will be a total of 9 chapters without a doubt. Um, I'm not sure which chapter is going to end up being the most climactic, but thus far my bet is on the previously-written "Chapter 8: Hate."  Great title, huh? I hope I have you hooked; that's why I told you in the first place! Yes, if you thought this chapter was a killer, wait 'til then! Muahah! The rest of the chapters should not come out as quickly as these two. I had a pretty free weekend, but the next will be more packed, so I'm going to end up not having anywhere near as much writing time. Alright, enough talking! I'm going back to Word! Bye! 


	3. Not Like Other Boys

****

Days of Pretending

__

Chapter 3: Not Like Other Boys

Peter Parker made himself some eggs that morning. He was happy; in fact, he was exhilarated. Last night, for the first time in weeks, his dreams had been unclouded and real. They had been perfect, seared with fantasies of holding hands and titles tossed aside and the moonlight just getting under his skin. He dreamed of a darkness that he longed for, its secrecy, the way it made him use all his senses aside from sight. He had smelled a beautiful woman, touched her hair, breathed her all night in his dreams and in reality. He could not remember which was which, when the sandman had taken over. 

There had been a lot of talking. Sometimes, Peter told stories, faded parchment memories about his uncle dying and becoming Spider-man and learning things he hadn't thought he would ever know. Sometimes, the speech was mere scattered words, mere phrases, not complete sentences, just uttered fragments. Sometimes they spoke not with tongues but with eyes, with smiles, with tears, with sighs. And, sometimes, they didn't talk at all, but just slept.

It had been an innocent night, like that of high school sweethearts who just simpered at each other and giggled. Along the same sweet and simple note, he didn't think they had even stayed up that late, though he couldn't remember anything in particular. Peter did not even know if he had kissed her. Being with her had been enough. 

He had woken that morning with a note about getting to work early pinned to his lamp. It had made him laugh, the devious, vixen-like tone that Mary Jane had written in:

__

"Peter: 

I have the early shift, but I'm sorry to have left you like this. I'll make it up to you later, okay? I love you.

- Love, Mary Jane"

What she implied by "making it up to him later" was beyond Peter's understanding. Faded watercolors of her face permeated his mind, and he knew that simply her presence would be enough. All that Peter knew was that he had a date that night, he supposed. Or so he hoped! Wasn't that what Mary Jane had meant? Or did his girlfriend have something else in mind?

__

"Girlfriend!" the young man thought with delight, cracking an egg open and listening to it sizzle in that familiar way. _That word, "girlfriend!" Doesn't it seem foreign and new? Yet, I like it. I really like the way it sounds. _

"She's my girlfriend," he said to himself with a large smile. "She's mine." With that he laughed aloud and flipped off the oven switch. He felt like singing, like dancing, like jumping for joy. His! His! Mary Jane was his and his alone right then and there, right in that moment. No one else could have her. She was given to him, just as he had offered himself to her like some sort of scanty gift to a goddess's altar. He dished out some eggs and waltzed ungracefully over to the counter. The phone watched him cross the room, tempting him with its glowing buttons and numbers. Its laughing smile brought him to the edge. 

Five minutes later found Peter's eggs cold and the phone book spread open before him. He pressed the numbers to Mary Jane's work. It rang twice before an older man's voice picked up. "Moon Dance Diner," he said in a monotonous voice.

"Is Mary Jane Watson there?" he asked excitedly, like a little boy waiting to open presents on a holiday. He fiddled with the buttons on his shirt sleeve, pushing and twisting them, while the boss paused to scan the room around him.

"Yeah. You're the boy from yesterday, aren't you? Hold up," said the boss without waiting for a reply. Peter fidgeted and nearly fell off his stool as he waited. 

"Miss Watson!" called a voice from the back room of the diner. Mary Jane lifted her head after setting down some utensils for an elderly couple. She strode in the general direction of the sound, not even aggravated if her boss was in a bad mood that day. Nothing could break her spirit today, not ever again, because she was dating Peter Parker. Her heart fluttered upon thinking of him, and she sighed and her eyes softened blue. 

"Yes?" Mary Jane questioned as the back door swung open at her push. The fat man shoved a phone into her hands with a warning glance in his eyes. She looked at it, then to him for an explanation. 

"It's that boy," he said grudgingly, as if he didn't deserve a name. "Don't be long. You don't get paid for chatting."

__

Peter! she thought with excitement, immediately pressing the telephone to her ear and sighing audibly. "Peter, hi," she said with a giggle, falling back onto a cheap plastic bench. "How are you?

"Mary Jane," Peter breathed on the other end of the line, resting his head on the table. "I'm good."

"Why did you call?" Mary Jane asked him, glad that he would spend some time to contact her.

"Because I missed you," Peter said softly, running a hand through his hair. His eyes fluttered shut as he listened to Mary Jane giggle and chuckle and murmur a few beautiful words about how sweet he was. The sounds were more glorious than orchestras, though the notes were simpler and easier, because they were sounds of her pleasure and delight.

"I missed you," Mary Jane whispered back through the kitchen din. "I'm really sorry that I had to leave your apartment early this morning." At this, she turned a little bit pink, thinking of the way she had fallen asleep on his couch with her arms entangled in his hair and shirt and blanket. _Don't let him be angry. _"But I'll make it up to you," she added as consolation. Those mysterious words caught his attention once again. Mary Jane continued, "I want to see you tonight. I can't wait. What time?"

"Any time," he said with a slight shrug, willing to put aside any other plans to see her. "Preferably as early as possible would be nice." She smiled on the other end.

"I'll come right after work," she swore to him. 

"Great. I love you, Mary Jane. I'll see you then."

She swooned against her will. "I love you, Peter. Bye."

"Bye," Peter said with a huge grin. He paused, not wanting to hang up quite yet. He listened to her breathing on the other end of the line, heard the sound of her exhaling. It reminded him of so many things, of the wind on his back the first time he had carried her after the World Unity Festival, of perfume and flowers in the breeze, of curtains that he had drawn shut the previous night to ensure her warmth. There was a slight click. 

Mary Jane set down the phone on the bench and leaned against the wall, looking up to the greasy ceiling. In due time, she would be out of that dump and where she belonged. Mary Jane smirked from ear to ear and tossed her head over her shoulder. The sooner she got back to work, the sooner she would work off the day's hours and get back to her apartment for a nice shower to wash off the grease. It was a motivating thought. 

Mary Jane felt a knot welling up in her stomach concerning the meeting for the evening. Though she loved Peter, a very small part of her hesitated. She had never been romantically involved with him before. What would he expect from her? Would he be like all the others? Would he be like the boys who kissed her and reached automatically for her shirt buttons? Mary Jane loved him with all of her heart, but she did not know what to expect from him or what he expected of her. What lengths was she willing to go to? 

__

If it makes him happy, I could maybe do it. I love him that much, she told herself, even though she didn't feel up to it in her spirit. Her heart was committed to Peter, but her body was a different matter. Could she really push the limits? Did she really want to do it? Perhaps it would merely a sacrifice to give herself to him, or maybe it would be self-destruction.

The day was relatively uneventful. The most exciting things that happened were that a little boy nearly spilled his drink over and an elderly man needed some help back to his car. That was alright; the tips were worth the trouble. She wondered where Peter was, swinging through the urban jungle, unleashed in his wild magnificence as he shot around skyscrapers and snapped like on an elastic band over rooftops. She worried about him these days; though she knew his capabilities, Mary Jane would have felt better if he had merely been at home studying.

Three o'clock came. She finished up with the last customer and headed to the back room to grab her coat and purse. She bid her coworkers a hasty farewell, and they cast her knowing looks and giggles. Mary Jane flicked them off. They did not understand what it was like to walk in her shoes and feel complete at last. They could not get it, not ever. They were not Mary Jane.

Twenty-five minutes later found her at Peter's apartment, breathless. She had already showered and changed clothes at her place before making a beeline to his. She was nearly to his green door, like the light at the end of the tunnel, when the door whipped open to reveal Peter leaning on the gate to heaven. 

"Hi," he said, as if it were perfectly normal to be able to sense her like that.

"Expecting me?" Mary Jane laughed cockily, leaning on the railing. Peter nodded vigorously, thus causing her to chuckle some more. In his usual charming fashion, he smiled boyishly and ushered her into the apartment. Her belongings were immediately abandoned on the counter. 

Peter had hardly closed the door before he was greeted with Mary Jane's hands draped over his arms and shoulders. His heart had been trembling spasmodically all day as he wondered about what secret, devious plan she had in store. He was slightly afraid of what she might be plotting, yet curious all at once. Peter was unsure. What would happen if Mary Jane started something he couldn't be committed to finishing?

Peter was almost relieved when Mary Jane merely kissed him softly on the cheek before burying her face in his shoulder. He sighed and held her waist, rocking her a little. "And to think I waited so long for something like this," he murmured thoughtlessly, savoring the sweetness of being near to her. 

"How was your day?" she asked his shoulder. 

"Decent," he replied. "My boss yelled at me for being incompetent, I was late for class, and I had to chase down a bus, but, hey, that's the usual. But it was quick and painless at least." Mary Jane smiled. 

"And how was Spider-man's day?" she asked him. The pieces to the little idea she had been stewing started to slip into place as she probed her boyfriend professionally and manipulatively. _Will this please you, Peter, this little brainchild of mine, my little scheme? This is for the things I left undone last night. This is for all the time I missed. Would you like me to make it up to you? Will it make you happy?_

"It was relatively calm. There wasn't much to do, save a few quick robberies," Peter told her, running a hand over her spine and making her shiver. 

Mary Jane glanced up to him. "Aren't you sore from swinging around all the time?" she questioned him with concernedly. She had him right where she wanted him. _Say yes, say yes. Say it, and we can get on with this, get it done. I want to make you happy, no matter what. _

Peter frowned. "Yes, now that I think about it. I'm still human. My body can only take so much pressure and wear and tear," he muttered a little shyly. 

Mary Jane grinned at her own brilliance. She slid her hands off of him and winked before going to the windows and beginning to shut them. Peter cocked at eyebrow at her odd behavior but was interrupted by her before the words could form on his tongue. "Take off your shirt," she commanded gently without looking at him as a window slammed closed. 

Peter blinked at her a number of times, hesitation creeping into his voice. "Um, why?" he asked timidly. _Mary Jane, I love you. My attraction to you is so much greater than physical. Was I wrong to think you felt otherwise? Do you love me for all the wrong reasons? Does only your body connect to me, not your heart? I'm so confused. Mary Jane, talk to me. _

She glanced up. "I'm going to give you a back massage, since you say you're sore. And it's much too hard to do it when you're wearing a shirt," she explained coolly. Mary Jane paused a moment, seeing the apprehension in Peter's face. Had she been wrong to assume he would like her little idea? Was she making him uncomfortable? "That is, if you want me to," she added with a slight smile to hide the fear she held behind her voice.

"Well, okay," Peter said after turning over the idea in his mind for a few seconds. _A back massage? No big deal,_ he thought to himself as he undid his shirt buttons with a shaky hand. What was he getting into? _Why is she doing this? What's her motivation? Would she be content to just let me hold her, or does she crave something more from me, something I don't think I'm ready to give? Oh, I don't like this game. I wish you would just talk to me and not be so mysterious. _"Why are you closing the windows?"

Mary Jane turned away from a window. She tried to hide a surprised smirk upon seeing Peter pull off his shirt in front of her. _Do you want me, Peter? If I do this, will you love me more? _"So you don't get cold," she replied steadily. 

__

I don't think being cold will be a problem, Peter remarked to himself before setting down his shirt on a chair awkwardly. 

"Go on, sit on the couch," Mary Jane gestured. She watched Peter cross the room and seat himself oddly on the couch. He crossed his arms over his chest in a protective way, his emotions hidden, his gaze unable to meet hers. Whenever she tried to meet his eyes, he looked away in an impersonal manner. 

Worried, she watched him shift with his gaze on the floor for a minute longer. _He's uncomfortable. I did something wrong. What did I do? What's wrong with me? _She looked at her hands pathetically. _I don't know how to give back massages anyway._

"Peter?" she asked hesitantly, wringing her hands together. Fearfully, he glanced up and caught his shirt as Mary Jane tossed it back. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "I don't know what I was thinking. I'm so sorry." 

He looked at the pale blue cloth in his hands. "I… it's not your fault. You didn't know," Peter remarked calmly, his nerves settling. "I should have said something." 

Mary Jane edged toward his recliner and sat on it across from him. She remembered backseats of cars, and senior prom, nights when she had turned down a boy's suggestion and turned down the boy himself. "I shouldn't have assumed. It's just… well, that's how things have been before with other boys. They were all very physical, and being physical made them happy, so I did it. I guess a part of me keeps thinking that's the way it has to be, the way it should be, the way boys always want it to be." She smiled. "But you're not like other boys." 

Peter blushed a deep red, sure that she was complimenting him. "Well, yes. You've surely been places I've never been," he worded delicately, "places I don't think I'm ready to go to, not yet." He stood as to more easily slip on his shirt and slid his arm in a sleeve, unrolling the article of clothing. "Don't take it that I don't love you. It's not that. It's just that… I'm not ready yet for where you want to take me." He slid on the other sleeve but was too distracted by her compassionate expression to button it up. It was a look of either gratefulness or longing; he could not discern the difference. 

"All I need… is to be with you," he breathed, lost in her face. His voice was distant, as if she was dragging him along another plane of existence simply by her very powerful presence. "That's enough. You don't have to feel compelled to do all sorts of other things like you did before," he confessed, striding toward her swiftly and getting down on his knees in front of her to look into her eyes. 

Mary Jane bit her lip and nodded, touched too deeply to speak. _How did he know about all those others?_ _How did he know that he could make it better by leaving me to make my own choices, taking away my pressure? How can he make me so at ease? _she thought in relief. "I… thank you," she stuttered, biting her lip. "Thank you for not being like other boys." 

Peter smiled sympathetically and rested his chin on her knees, sliding down to sit himself directly on the floor. "No problem," he responded with a twinkle in his eye, placing his hand over hers. 

Three hours and a few cups of coffee later found Peter and Mary Jane snuggled on the floor on the balcony with a blanket draped over their shoulders. They peered through the bars of the iron trestle of the railing and watched the sun dip below the horizon. The caffeine was wearing off, and thus visions blurred as the colors smeared together. Peter slowly leaned down to kiss Mary Jane quietly. "The stars are coming out," she whispered as his lips brushed her cheek. 

"Beautiful," Peter commented, lifting his eyes up to see a few lights sparkle in the sky. He ran a stray finger over her jaw line. 

They were silent for a while as more stars started to appear across the blue panels of the sky. The blanket ruffled in the breeze, wind darting between the fabric's weaves. Mary Jane wondered aloud if one could ever really count the stars in the sky, and Peter replied that he thought not, being that new stars were born all the time. 

"The world's always changing," he remarked. 

"For better or for worse," Mary Jane added, snuggling into him a little more. "Today, it changed for the better." She met his eyes meaningfully and gave him a light Eskimo kiss, brushing her nose against his. _It's better than anything I've ever felt in my life. It's better than anything I ever thought I could experience. Is this nirvana? Let this be real. Let this be eternal, _she thought passionately. 

When the sky had finally darkened as much as it possibly could, they closed their eyes to the blackness and city streetlamps, and turned to each other for the source of their light. 

~~~

AN: This chapter has had a serious makeover. Somehow, it ended out kind of raunchy and weird, didn't it? Gee! It was created mainly to set up the setting of the relationship. I wanted this to be pure Mary Jane and Peter interaction, which it mostly is, save the beginning. 

At first, it was going to be pure, magical fluff. But I did not want to be cliché, and it's hard these days, because everyone thinks of the good ideas before I do and if I used them, it would be plagiarism. Then, it was going to be a little flirty, humorous, full of romantic banter meant to make you laugh. The back massage idea came into play at first as a part of this; I had thought naïve Peter's reactions would be a laugh. And somehow that escalated and the plotline became more serious, and so look where I ended up. I didn't want a big, huge conflict, but I ended up sort of creating one with the sexual tension thing. (Woo.) I guess stories are just better with a conflict, huh? 

Perhaps this was a little risqué, a little more PG-13 than the previous chapters. I didn't mean for it to be. If the topic made you uncomfortable, I give my apologies. My summary does have a warning for this chapter. I just thought it's a good subject to be addressed. If people feel uncomfortable in a relationship, what's to be done? It's a real world issue. Peter and Mary Jane live in the same real world; why wouldn't they confront the same problems? Besides, I really think that in stories of any type, it's great when there's a lesson to be learned. Of course, when we read a book, we like to be entertained; that's primarily why we do read. But it's also nice when you come back from reading a book and you feel a little wiser. Now, I'm not being cocky; I wouldn't dare say this story would make anyone wiser save myself, because I'm learning not to be too overdramatic and to be open to suggestions. However, give a few seconds to thinking about this issue I'm presenting. (I sound like a theology teacher. Good heavens.)

I liked doing this especially from shy, naïve Peter's POV. Good heavens, I love writing about that boy. He's so diverse and fun to write about! Anyhow, review, please. I hope you liked this. 

PS: Credit goes to my friend Lerm for assisting me in the balcony scene. Merci! (Isn't that French for thanks?)


	4. Daisy Chain Jane

**Days of Pretending**

_Chapter 4: Daisy Chain Jane_

It was three weeks later. Yes, three very wonderful weeks had passed since their sunset-lit slumber, and things were going better than either Mary Jane or Peter expected. Satisfaction could be guaranteed after all; never before had either of the two been more complete, more overjoyed, more content. Both marveled at the amazing experience of a kiss, the incredibility of a smile, the sensation of being together. 

Peter had spent many nights thinking of the time they had spent together. He recalled picnics in Central Park under a great oak tree, the leaves falling around them, the blue blanket fluttering in the breeze as they shook the dirt from it. He remembered snuggling with hot coffee under a quilt in front of old reruns. Peter thought about sitting in ancient cafes, reading books to each other, laughing over comics. He remembered the curves of her fingertips, the way their hands fit together, the lines on her palm. 

So, three weeks later found Peter Parker tapping on Mary Jane's apartment door, this memories that were so close running through his brain. He was begging in the thumping to be allowed in. The door flew open promptly. "Peter!" she exclaimed, craning her flushed head out of the doorway. He could not get over the way she looked, the beauty of her smile, the elegance of her form and manner. Her grin lit up his life. He took a step towards her. 

It was then that she gasped. 

Peter stood holding the prettiest bouquet of flowers she had ever seen. The colors of the rainbow bloomed before her, wrapped in red tissue paper. She swallowed a very strong emotion in the back of her throat and snapped her jaw back into place. "Peter?" she asked incredulously, motioning to the blossoms.

"Yeah, for you," Peter said proudly, thrusting them into her stunned hands. 

Shakily, she brought the package to her face and sniffed the exotic aroma, amazed. Things she had felt recently, like knots deep inside of her, choked her voice into an inaudible whisper. "You shouldn't have," she said with a smile. 

Peter blushed and scuffed his foot along the floor, embarrassed yet overjoyed at Mary Jane's reaction to the flowers he had bought her. She again buried her face in the red and purple petals and inhaled the sweet aroma, her eyelashes fluttering as the smell weakened her. 

"Well, it is your birthday," he explained, fidgeting. "I wanted to, anyway."

"They're beautiful," she told him, her eyes meeting his. "Thank you, Peter." Her smile brightened. 

 "Can I come in?" he asked, dragging a hand through her hair softly.

"Maybe," Mary Jane responded with a grin. "If I said that you couldn't, would you swing in through my window?" she asked him. Her eyes penetrated him, her lips smirked, and she dared him to answer. Thunder answered her deep inside his chest.

"Yeah," he admitted, scooting himself up to her. "You think a lousy window would keep me out of your house?" He made a pass to step into the apartment, but she gently forbade him to enter by keeping her ground in front of him. She was very close. 

"But that would be breaking-and-entering, Mr. Righteous," the redheaded woman reminded him, her whispers trailing on his neck. Her eyes danced down to his parted lips. 

"Watson, you're thinking very logically," Peter teased, running a thumb over her cheek. "But you've forgotten something entirely." He closed in on her, his lips an inch away, his hands playing with the hair at the base of her neck.

"What's that?" she breathed, her eyes fluttering up to gaze into his own blue orbs. Her spare hand ventured up his chest, fiddling with his tie, tracing little circles.

 "Why would you ever lock me out in the first place?" he asked her cockily yet quietly, his fingers weaving into her fiery red mane. She smiled, but soon her expression softened. The longing in his eyes reached deep into the pit of her soul.

Mary Jane reached out to tug on his red tie and drag his face and lips down to hers. The pale and dark blossoms brushed against his shirt as they kissed, the leaves spilling over the paper they were wrapped in, a spare daisy falling to the floor, unnoticed. Lips lingered. When the paper made a slight crunching noise, they broke the kiss, not wanting to squish the beautiful plants. "If I am thanked like this every time I give you flowers, I'll buy you flowers every day," Peter told her flirtatiously, laughing in unison with his girlfriend.

"Being saucy like that might get you locked out," Mary Jane said jokingly, drawing him in by his tie. Peter smirked at the way she led him around like a little puppy dog, like she possessed him. He stepped on the fallen flower, crushing it obliviously.

She laid the bouquet down on the counter and kicked the door closed behind them, still gripping his tie. "Are you going to let me go?" he asked with mock suspicion in his voice.  She glanced up at him as she moved the flowers away from the edge of the counter. 

"No," she responded mischievously. "I kind of think this is fun." 

"Oh, c'mon, MJ, please?" Peter Parker begged, laughing. He was silenced when she kissed him again, her lips covering his own, swallowing his words just as he spoke them. He felt himself give a little bit under her mouth as she tempted him with her kisses along his cheek and the edge of his jaw.

"Will you stop being so tense?" Mary Jane whispered in her lover's ear. "I'd like to put you at ease." 

"Whatever you're doing, it's working," he said cautiously, letting his eyes fall close as her lips dances across his face, touching as lightly as butterflies might. 

Mary Jane smiled. "I just want to thank you for always looking out for me, for taking care of me. I just thought that you ought to rest and have someone else look after you for a while. You really need a break," she told him insistently, pressing a kiss upon his forehead. "Now, you go lay on the couch while I put these lovely flowers in a glass or something." He obeyed, taking off his tie and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt. 

Mary Jane arranged the flowers with celerity in a plastic vase that she had purchased a long time ago. She turned back to see Peter tossing his tie on her coffee table. The red of his costume peeked out from underneath the shirt's collar. 

"Peter," she said, motioning with a hand. "Your costume is showing," she explained to his confused look. 

He glanced down. "Oh!" he said with surprise, promptly buttoning up the shirt again. 

"Why don't you just take off the costume?" she asked him with a shrug, coming to sit down next to him. 

"I can't," Peter answered with a shake of his head. He finished buttoning the collar up. "What if I have to run off at a moment's notice to help someone? I can't do it without my costume and be seen. It would lead to too much publicity, to too much confusion." He raked a hand through his hair. 

"I thought you were supposed to relax," she said with a faint smile, laying a hand on Peter's own. "Remember?" A little part of her cringed, knowing Peter might have to leave abruptly at any time. He was right, of course, but it frightened her to think of him as such a puppet of the city.  

"I know. But it's hard," Peter told her. "I just guess I can't get away from it, from Spider-man."

"It might help to take it off for a while," Mary Jane suggested. "Just for a little bit, maybe?" She gave him hand a slight squeeze, her eyes encouraging him.

"No," he said with a sigh. _Please don't push me further, Mary Jane. I don't want another person to end up like my uncle because I didn't feel like getting up. _

Her face fell. "Tell me, Peter, what happens when you're in the shower and your costume is off and you can't get to it and someone calls out for help?" she asked. She had not meant to use an example with such graphic imagery inside her head. It made them both duck their heads and blush. 

"It hasn't happened before," he said with an uneasy shrug. 

"And if it did?" 

"I would jump out of the shower as fast as I could and hope I got there in time," he responded. 

"And if you didn't?"

"I-" His breath caught in his throat. His hand quivered beneath her hand. She did not see from his eyes, understand the way he had helplessly watched his uncle die, or cry when he saw a robber get away. She did not understand what it was like to lose an uncle who was more than a father. "I would feel awful." 

"Why?" she asked him, leaning in. "Why would you feel so bad? You were not the one who committed the crime. It would not your fault," she argued.

"Yes, it would be," he responded, his eyes flickering with an emotion she had never seen him possess before. "Don't you see? I would be just as bad, because I have the power to do something, and in doing nothing with that power, I would be guilty." There was a long pause while Peter shifted in his seat, looking out of the window with a very longing look in his eyes. "My uncle said to me once that if I had a great power, I had to use it. So I do." Mary Jane bit her lip, regretting that she had brought up such a topic. 

The redhead was silent as she held Peter's hand, feeling the warmth of his touch to be very comforting, even when he was the one who seemed to need the consolation most. After a moment, he got up awkwardly. "I think I'll take it off, just to see," he told her. He didn't know why he wanted to remove the costume. He rarely did, only to shower and to wash it and to sometimes sleep. He wanted to know what it felt like to not wear it, regularly to not be Spider-man underneath. A part of him had forgotten what it was like to be weak and powerless, what is was like be a normal human being rather than a goddamn freak show to be marveled at. Didn't he miss being just the average kid? Maybe being Spider-man was better than being teased or getting beat up; and, yet, perhaps it wasn't. 

He just wanted to remember who he had been, the boy next door to Mary Jane who talked about dreams across the gate, the one who used to study and feed off of science as if the study were his life force, the young man approaching adulthood who still had to deal with things like facial hair and prom dates.

He wanted to go back, maybe for five minutes. It might be nice to reminisce.

Mary Jane nodded and he left, going into the bathroom. She sat there for a very long minute while Peter removed the costume, twiddling her thumbs, still sick with regret and so carelessly bringing up the sore subject. In the bathroom, he removed his shirt and pants and finally the costume. He threw it onto the floor, letting the different pieces of the ensemble sit there, forgotten, while he put his ordinary pale blue shirt and dark gray slacks over his underclothes.  He looked in the mirror, feeling naked without the red suit on. It was on the floor, not on him, he reminded himself. 

Peter exited with the costume in his hands. Mary Jane twisted to see him come out and put the costume defiantly on a chair behind him, where he couldn't see it. "It… it does feel good to have it off," he told her honestly, making a tiny smile at her. He exhaled deeply and powerful, feeling like he was free of a very large burden for a very short time. 

He wasn't Spider-man. He did not have to save the city, rescue human race. He was just a young man trying to get through a regular old life now. He was not Spider-man for five minutes! 

Mary Jane nodded and bit her lip, her eyes watering up just as his own did. "It feels… really, really good,"  
he added, his voice lighter. A huge smile suddenly sprang across his face. "It feels great." Mary Jane jumped to her feet and ran to him, skidding on the cheap tiles to slide into his arms. He let out a choked sob into her shoulder as they collided before being reduced to soft sniffles and gasps. 

"Mary Jane, I hate Spider-man. I hate him. He suffers too much. It feels so good to not be him at all," Peter told her, wiping his eyes on his shirt cuff. Mary Jane shushed him, soothed his whimpers, running a hand over his muscled shoulders. Her heart leapt into her throat to realize that there was no faint raised web design under the shirt, no red and blue fabric acting as a middle man. There was skin under it, real skin, real flesh and bone, the kind she knew and recognized, the stuff that was important and palatable to her. There was a real human, not Spider-man, underneath his clothes. 

Perhaps Peter realized it at the same time, because right then he took the chance to kiss her passionately, all his rage and his love and his fear flowing out through his lips as she took away all his thoughts and relaxed him, melted him. 

"Mary Jane," he said, breathless, forgetting what he'd meant to say exactly. "Mary Jane, I love you."

Mary Jane threw back her hair and laughed, the red hair spilling like a waterfall down her back in a gentle cascade, because it felt so damn good to hear Peter say it. "Oh, Peter, I love you, too," she replied as she laughed, taking him up in her arms and kissing him again wherever her lips happened to fall. 

"C'mon," she begged him, wrapping both Peter's hands in her own in some unidentifiable knot that wouldn't ever untangle, "come with me." Mary Jane dragged him down to the couch and just held him, arms across his back and shoulders, rocking him back and forth as he lay in her arms like a little babe, a newborn who was just realizing for the first time who he really was inside the mess of a world. Sometimes she did murmur little things, words of love and thanks and praise, but Peter liked it when Mary Jane was silent, too, when he could just concentrate on their sounds of their breathing together. He fell to daydreaming about the verdant hue of her eyes. 

It seemed like it had been gloriously endless days when they at last parted their embrace. Softly, Peter kissed Mary Jane's petal-soft lips, thanking her with tongue but no words. She yielded to his advance, hanging to him for strength and hope. Peter broke their kiss unwillingly, hesitantly, looking into her eyes for reassurance. She smiled very faintly and ran a hand against his face. "Peter, you never cease to amaze me," she told him in a voice that was softer than angel wings flapping in the wind. "You are so good-hearted, so gentle." She giggled. "Kiss me again, please. You're a good kisser."

"Am I?" he repeated, leaning down to capture her lips yet again as they unfolded. 

"I can vouch for you," she whispered out between the kiss. That made him laugh. 

If anyone was in need, Peter did not hear them calling. Maybe it was the costume, which lay discarded carelessly on the floor, that blocked out anything. But Peter did not mind the silence, because he was deaf for hours to everything but the sweet whispers and chuckles of the beautiful woman who had taken everything away.  

But it was watching him with its dead silver eyes. The mask cast a knowing glance across the room, beckoning, undeniably right. After all, as much as Peter loved being free of the damned thing, he never could be ever again, not after knowing that he could be Spider-man and do good. The costume laughed, throwing back its ugly red head and rearing up triumphantly, knowing it would always prevail in the depth of Peter's mind.

Slipping into darkness as the moon plunged up into the well of the night sky, Peter and Mary Jane fell apart from each other's presence like vines torn from the soil. Peter could not help but feel his entire insides welling up in denial and procrastination as he saw the costume on the other side of the room. He looked away from its cursed color back to Mary Jane. 

"I need to go put my costume on," he said. He was right, unfortunately. He had to do it. He could never forget to put it on. He could never forget it, not ever, just like he could never forget the look in his uncle's eyes, or the dying smile, or the gunshots. It would always call him, beckon with webbed fingers curling, its mouth-less face grinning. 

Peter unwound Mary Jane's hands from his bare back, retrieved his shirt – which had somehow ended off of him – and turned to the costume. Mary Jane watched his face fall as he looked at it. She knelt on the floor in front of the couch, her arms resting upon its seat, her unusual position about as out of place as the fire-engine red suit in her living room. Peter picked it up swiftly, his brows knitted together, and made a grand entrance into the bathroom. 

When he returned, Mary Jane could have cried. He was buttoning the top button as he came out, and she could see the red peeking out over the edge. A glow in his face had diminished to a steady flickering that was lessening more and more. He looked caged, captive, aloof. She did not like the way he looked at all. He was Peter, but he was Spider-man now, too. A very wretched part of her thought that maybe she loved Peter less this way.__

"I had best be going. How about you come over to my place for dinner Tuesday night?" he asked her very serenely as the maelstrom of thoughts whooshed through his brain. 

"Yeah, that'd be nice," she said with a smile, helping herself to her feet. "Thanks for the flowers." 

"Happy birthday," he said to her, extending his arms to her and embracing her choppily. He had forgotten how restricting the fabric could be; it wasn't skin, after all. They kissed solemnly, very carefully, because there was another person in the room, watching them, a person without a face, only eyes. She released him slowly, fingers unpeeling, grasp loosening but never really letting go until he was so far away she couldn't touch him. Mary Jane smiled and Peter returned the motion before making his way to the door and looking back, eyes meeting hers. It was strange, like there was something he couldn't say or do, like he was only half of himself. The whole thing was formal and tight and messy. Something was missing.

_You're not the same now. It was a mistake to take off the costume, wasn't it? Because now you know. Now you know what it would be like to not be Spider-man, and you want it again, but you can't have it. That longing's going to be destructive. It's going to ruin you, because you can never attain the impossible, and it's going to make you explode inside. Peter, I'm sorry I said it. I wish you had remained naïve, but I am too convincing for our own good, she thought bitterly and angrily as he fell back from her._

"Bye," he said, taking a step and then turning back to face her. He fumbled for the door handle behind him, opened it, and stepped out backwards, not wanting to break the contact their eyes had. _Mary Jane, he thought with the words he couldn't manage to say, __don't be angry at me. I can't react now. I'm two people again, and it feels a little weird, a little strange. I feel like I can't give all of myself to you. What's with that? But I love you. That's enough. Don't think I'm an oddball for not knowing what to feel, but I feel like a traitor, knowing that I'm limited by who I am. _

"Bye," she whispered, and the door closed. She sat there, not knowing quite what to do. She got up and went to admire the flowers. She plucked out a daisy, looking at all the petals, their crisp whiteness. They really were beautiful. 

Mary Jane remembered her childhood, cold days of sorrow outside of the house she did not like at all, and how she spent lonely afternoons sitting out in the back yard with flowers in her hair. She remembered chains she would make of daisies, how she went parading through the grass with her crown of dandelions, and the way the air smelled on those free days when she was not herself. It was those times she wanted to escape things she couldn't understand.

So she started to weave, making a daisy chain, knotting together a few stems. 

The flowers bloomed against her pale hands as she tied together a few more stems. The daisies were white and large and elegant, with pale porcelain faces that had no expression and were open for interpretation. The chain was getting long. The daisies spread across the table in a linked cord. There was about three feet of it, and she held the creation up and examined it. 

_He loves me, he loves me not, she thought. It was silly to ask. Of course Peter loved her. But could he? There was suddenly the realization that Spider-man curbed things in the relationship. She did not like where things were heading. _

She plucked a flower. "He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not," she said as she yanked off a few petals. She ended on "he loves me." The petals blew off of the table as she sighed against her will. 

_Doesn't he? Yes. He loves me. He's willing to sacrifice everything for me. He loves me, he does, but why did I feel for a moment there like he didn't, like he didn't know if he did or not? Peter, why is this so weird suddenly? she thought with a cry echoing inside of her mind. __Spider-man is making things weird. You love me, but you feel bad because Spider-man holds a part of you still. You still have to be cautious and silent. You must remember that Spider-man brings trouble. _

"Damn it all to hell!" she screamed suddenly, picking up the chain and rushing to the window. She threw the thing out, letting it fall. Petals – and Peter – knew nothing about love. They did not know what was right to do, what was wrong to do. They didn't know anything at all. 

~~~ 

AN: At long last, chapter 4 is finally complete.  Hurray! Well, hand me some tissues right now, kiddies, 'cause I might just cry for a number of reasons: 

1.) I love this chapter. It kind of is cliché, I know. God, I hate it when my things come out that way, but there's just some sappy lines that just seem very unrealistic, but you know, that's life. This chapter is really sad, though, at least in my humble opinion. I mean, they're so helpless to circumstances. Peter just cannot escape Spider-man and everything that Spider-man represents, everything Spider-man is responsible for. He hates it, but he feels too damn bad to give up being the masked man. And MJ just can't get enough of Peter, and she's getting a little tense, a little awkward, a little disoriented. I feel bad for both MJ and Peter, though I can't say I feel worse for either of them. Poor kiddies! Why the hell am I torturing them? Because trial leads to something great, silly kids.  

_2.) I got so few reviews last chapter. What was it, like 3? Those of you who wrote to me, I love you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But that really upset me that I got so few reviews. Cheri, you are a goddess because you recommended me. I cannot possibly be any more appreciative of that! Please, folks, talk about me. *cough* It would be nice if you said good things, but, sure, I'll take criticism over nothing any day of the week. You're all so kind!  ___

This was one of those chapters where I knew what I wanted to happen, what feelings I wanted to be felt, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get to that point. The flowers for her b-day came out as being a really cliché sort of boyfriend-thing. Blah to that. But, well, the rest came out kind of good, maybe slightly cliché. I liked how it turned out with her loving him more with the costume off, somehow. It was meant to be very symbolic. People do actually think in that way, sometimes. I can't think of an example right now, but people make teeny weenie brain associations, don't you think? Anyways, the ending was my favorite. Best line of the whole thing: "A very wretched part of her thought that maybe she loved Peter less this way." 

I am so big on symbolism in this story. I'm just so excited. I have the best plan. Let's just say that I love parallel situations (when the same sort of situation occurs again but the characters react differently). This fic right now doesn't seem to have a definite conflict as of now, though you might see one forming by this point. Look around the story. There are so many things that are just screaming "symbolism" and "foreshadowing" for a special hint. __

Yes, because I have not yet said this, Spider-man and all related characters and plotlines do not belong to me, but to Marvel Comics and Stan Lee, etc. I do not own them; do not sue me, etc. Thanks a ton for reading my abbreviated disclaimer. __


	5. Kiss Me On The Way Home

**Days of Pretending**

By Blu Wynd Faerie

_Chapter 5: Kiss Me On The Way Home _

It was a rainy day, and the streets were cold like ice dripping down a frozen corpse. The wind whipped down the alleys and over the fire escapes like sneaky night thieves, caped men who hid in shadows and stalked without footsteps. Mary Jane wanted to scream at the chill on her skin. _You would think that heavy jeans and a thick sweater with a coat would be enough, she thought with a grumble. __It's only November._

A taxi splashed in the pooling waters next to the curb. She slammed her fist down on it to claim it for her own. "It's too cold to walk," she explained to the driver as she climbed in. She gave the black man with blue dreadlocks the address, and he took flight across the gridlock streets of New York City.

She had not seen Peter for a week, thanks to conflicting schedules. It upset her that he was unable to meet her, but the redheaded maiden tried not to grudge Peter that. Mary Jane did not think he was avoiding her, as she could not think why he would want to, and she trusted the fact that Peter was a nice kid who wouldn't be that cruel. Mary Jane did not doubt that when he was not with her, he was crime-fighting. It wasn't his fault that the city was being robbed left and right. Still, she could not help feel hurt that Peter wasn't there when she needed him to be.

Mary Jane paid the cab driver as they pulled up. "Be careful out there, lady," he reminded her, speaking in a soft voice that was high in tone for that of a man. "There's danger everywhere in this city." 

"I know," she told him, nodding. "But thanks anyways." He shrugged and slid his sophisticated glasses farther up his nose and for a second he ooked much too intelligent to be a cab driver, but he sped away before Mary Jane could say anything. So she entered the apartment and climbed the rickety steps as quickly as her legs could take her. She wanted to see her boyfriend so badly that her heart felt contorted, knotted, maybe even dissected.

Finally, Mary Jane knocked on the apartment door. There was no answer. She sighed and knocked again. He had said he would be home, and that they could both go out for a nice dinner that night. Why wasn't he available? Frustration boiled up underneath her skin, and she knew that the back of her neck was getting hot from her anxiousness. "Is anyone home?" she called out impatiently, thumping on the hard door again. 

It swung open. Harry leaned against the doorframe. "No, nobody's here," he responded charmingly, a smile gracing his features. 

Taken aback, and yet amused, her hand in mid-air, Mary Jane smiled. "Hi, Harry. Long time no see," she said gracefully. A little awkward feeling crept up into her throat. Here she was, at her boyfriend's front door, being flirted with by her ex-boyfriend.  

"Same to you," he replied, shooing her inside from the cold evening. "Come on in." The apartment he offered to her was much warmer and significantly more comfortable than the outside. She set down her purse and coat on a chair. 

"Thanks so much," she said with her thankfulness spilling over in her radiant smile. "It's been really cold for this time in the year." 

"I'll say!" Harry laughed. "Tell me, what's new with you?" he asked, sitting himself down on the couch. Mary Jane joined him, latching her ankles sophisticatedly.

"Oh, nothing much," she said with a smile. Her face deformed uncharacteristically as more of that strange emotion swept into her heart and wracked at her brain. She stood up suddenly, her back turned to him. "Harry, I don't know if Peter mentioned this or not, but he and I are… dating." Embarrassment at how foolish she sounded crept into her cheeks, reddening them in her shame and nervousness. 

"Oh, don't worry. Peter mentioned it. In fact, he mentions it a lot, about as much as humanly possible." Harry grinned boyishly. "I think he's obsessed with you." A hint of mischievousness slid across his handsome features. 

Mary Jane's face turned even pinker when she looked back to see the smirk on Harry's face. She tried to wipe the silly, girlish smile from her features as she strode onto a more serious note. "And you're okay with this?" she asked, meeting his eyes.

"Yes," Harry replied in a very persistent matter. "Of course I am. You're both my friends. Whatever makes you happy makes me happy."  
  


"You're not just saying that, are you?" Mary Jane asked him with weariness and worry tugging at the corners of her mouth. She started to pace feverishly. "I mean-"

"Calm down, Mary Jane," he said with a shushing tone to his voice. He grabbed her wrist to stop her from pacing. "Don't wear my carpet thin." Mary Jane's eyes softened. He went on, "Look, just because I'm your 'ex-boyfriend' or whatever doesn't mean we have to be weird and awkward around each other. I'm still your friend, aren't I?"

"Yes." 

"Then, as a friend, I just want to know about how things are going between you and your boyfriend." 

Mary Jane bit her lip, slightly less uncomfortable but nonetheless unnerved. "Are you sure? Doesn't it hurt you, knowing that I'm dating your best friend?" she asked curiously, reseating herself next to him on the couch. 

He paused for a moment, staring straight ahead. "A little. You're still the first girl I was really serious about," Harry confessed, his face losing some of its playfulness. Mary Jane looked away, unable to meet his eyes. Harry continued, "But that doesn't mean I grudge you this or anything, okay? I'm not angry that we broke up. I still… love you."

She almost couldn't take what he was saying. "I-" she began, but he intercepted her words.

"Hey, don't apologize. There's nothing to be sorry for. I know I'm not sorry for anything," he said. He rose. "Would you like some coffee or something? It's no trouble. I'm making some for myself anyway."

"Yes, please," she politely said. "You're not sorry we broke up?" she persisted, not wanting to leave her questions unanswered. She leaned forward, genuinely interested in what he was saying.

"Nope," Harry replied very calmly, talking still as he headed for the kitchen. 

Mary Jane rose to follow him. "But you said you still… love me," she struggled to choke out confusedly.

"Yes. I love you. But I don't love us together," he answered her. He pulled out the milk from the refrigerator. "Sometimes two people are very attracted to each other, but when it comes down to it, it just doesn't work, no matter what." 

"And what makes you say that?" Mary Jane pressed further. A weird feeling, which was very different from her previous awkwardness, snuck into her head, hiding behind her brain. She could sense it, and she did not like it. She did not like what Harry was saying about love. 

"It's the truth. You and I did not work out, did we? And we loved each other, too. Some pairs are just hopeless," he said depressingly. "Can we please change the subject? It's kind of sad to think about."  
  


"I… yes, I'm sorry," Mary Jane consented. "Tell me something else I ought to know." 

And so they talked for a long hour or so over coffee, waiting for Peter to return. The moon rose over the windy night, casting its irregular shadows across the poorly-lit room, making mysterious the lights on the walls. Much laughter resounded through the apartment. But in the back of her mind Mary Jane could not shake the eerie relevance of what Harry had said to her relationship with Peter. Was it true that people who loved each other were sometimes not meant to be, despite their affinity for each other? She did not dare to question him further about it, as to not make her friend uncomfortable, but Mary Jane did not want to imagine that what Harry believed was true.

The clock on the counter struck seven o'clock; Harry rose. Mary Jane watched him stand curiously. "It's been great talking to you, but I have to go. I have a date tonight." 

"A date?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. 

Harry face got a suspicious look. "Yes. Don't look at me like that. It's my cousin! For God's sake!" They both laughed. Harry explained further. "We're just going to discuss what to do with some of my father's possessions," he said, his voice shadowy and whispering at the mention of his deceased father. She laid a hand over his own, but he shrugged a little and nodded to assure her that he was fine. "You can stay if you want until Peter comes." 

"I'd like that," she said. "Thanks so much for everything." She rose and gave him a strong hug. She wasn't sure why tears beaded up behind her eyelids as she held him like that. It was either sweet nostalgia or terrible regret that drove her to her tears; or, maybe it was something different, because their past together was bleeding into her present with Peter. She hid her water-stained cheeks from Harry with a touch of the backs of her fists. Then, with a wave and a smile, Mary Jane saw him out the door. 

After Harry had left, she wandered to the couch again and laid her head on the pillows, watching the stars peeking out in the darkness of the sky. Mary Jane watched a small cloud, gray-colored against the moon and the red-black of the nighttime, drag over a patch of stars, a constellation she knew once but had forgotten. Her red hair pooled at the back of her neck as she craned her head to see the city lights flicker and ignite, drowning out the stars that were just appearing.

She did not know how long she was there, just watching some things, anything. She didn't know why she didn't turn on the television or read the newspaper; maybe it was because the media and those sorts of modern things were complicated when she didn't need complication, and the starlight was simple and easy to comprehend and it didn't hurt anything. It did not require her to think about things she did not want to think about right then, like Peter. 

Nature was not easy, but it was not stringy and tough like bad meat. It was always beautiful, rare, and never hated. It was miraculous, even. It was an escape, like her wreath of flowers, something that let her drift a little farther away from who she was. It was a fantasy in a place far away from the situations she did not want to confront. And that was why she loved it.

Mary Jane's gaze flitted against her will at a small movement. A spider was crawling on the wall. Perhaps nature in itself was untainted and simple, but that spider brought more thoughts to her brain at once than she thought she could handle.

_Peter, she thought, and Mary Jane knew that as soon as his name crept into her space she would not be able to turn away from the subject. __I miss you so much. Where are you? Are you safe? She rose and went to the window, pressing her fingers against it, looking for maybe a tiny flash of red and blue in the huge, meandering cityscape. The lights blinded her, though, and she almost saw nothing. When she turned her pretty eyes to the sky again the stars were so dim compared to mankind's light that she only saw a few of their myriad multitudes. _

_I want to get inside your head. I want to know why you do the things you do, Peter. Why must you feel so compelled to be Spider-man, this person whom the both of us hate? I know you feel responsible for the death of your uncle, but don't you realize that Spider-man might be the death of you? He could even be the death of us as a whole. With you gone on nights like these, nights when I need you, we might just fall apart. Of course, Mary Jane did not dare to linger long on the thought of not being together with Peter, because it was a soft topic. But it had vaguely brushed against her mind, and she did not like its phantom touch. _

"Peter," she moaned, her back to the glass. She slid down it, leaving a smear. _I know you have to be Spider-man, deep inside of you. It's so important to you. But aren't I important to you, too? Call me selfish, but right now I think I need you most of all. It hurt me to be alone before, when I was a parentless child, and I still haven't gotten used to it. I only want to be loved more, really loved, like princesses get loved in fairytales. She sighed. __I want something real and flawless in my life. What she could not understand that nothing could be both real and flawless at the same time. _

Days of yore had passed her by. Those were the days when Mary Jane had gone home to her room, where she could remain unfortunately alone, but it was still no home at all. Mary Jane had not really found a home anywhere, except for inside herself on the best of days. She did not find it in the backseats of boyfriends' cars, or in popularity, or in her beauty. She found her home in the times when she ran around her backyard and picked beautiful blossoms that knew no pain. She found home when she felt proud of herself at auditions. She found it when she leaned over her neighbor's fence and wanted to hold his hands and fall in love with him. She found it in the shy arms of this same naïve neighbor. She found home in his kiss, too. 

His kiss was fleeting on nights like these; kisses were vague remembrances, phantom sensations that she missed from heavens she had seen once before. She wanted to die to go to heavens like those. Mary Jane crossed her arms and knew she could not expect the world nipping at her feet joyously, even when she wanted to live that life. Mary Jane knew that she could not expect to be at home all the time with Peter Parker. But once a person has a taste of something magnificent like that, it's hard to let it go. 

Mary Jane sighed and rose, stumbling to the couch, because she was tired and sleep was wearing down on the corners of her eyes. _I'll be waiting, Peter. Just get back to me safely. She yanked on the quilt that was tossed over the back of the sofa and pulled it up to her ears, situated the pillows under her head as she squirmed to get comfortable. She soon enough slipped into a deep slumber, smudging at her face in her reveries._

She did not know how long it was when her sleep was disturbed. Mary Jane only knew that it was long enough for the tears to really dry upon her rosy cheeks. She sat up, running slender fingers through her disarrayed red hair. It was then that she realized what had woken her up. The door opened slowly, creaking conspicuously, and Peter entered the apartment.

Peter looked tired, battle-worn. A deep red cut sliced across the skin of his hand, and it made her shiver to see the wound's sickly color. His hair had lost its usual neatness and was mussed with the day's work and struggle, the strands disarranged from being flattened under his suit's headpiece. His eyelids were fluttering with his need for sleep, and his shirt was wrinkled. Mary Jane felt her heart pang for him. 

"Peter?" she sighed, and he spun on his heel to look at her. Surprise was written all over his face. His eyes met hers. He had never before seen such longing in her eyes, such need, such pain and sorrow and desperation. 

"Mary Jane," he said, echoing names back at her. He dropped his coat on the chair as he came towards her swiftly and in a needy manner. Mary Jane tripped up from her makeshift bed, a pile of pillows and a throw blanket, and into his open arms, smothering him with kisses on his face. She couldn't keep her hands off of him. 

Peter backed up a step to look at her, his eyes searching her own. His finger trailed along her cheek, his fingertips familiar with the way that dried tears felt upon skin. Hungrily, he kissed her petal-soft lips, tasting the nectar that kept him moving through the day, relishing the feeling that he lived the days through just to feel at the end. 

~~

AN: Yah! The blue-haired man is my prophet. He's going to come in later as the bringer of words and messages. (Haha! Yay!) Harry was kind of random. But I figured that this was a chapter for prophecies and advice and letting MJ and Peter have a wee bit of help in their relationship, so I shoved him in there to be the median man. Why not? He had a major effect on them both. 

I know that it's short. The real adventure is the next chapter. Expect chapter 6 to be about 10 pages long. It's going to be huge, baby! I'm excited. There's not much to say about this except that it's really MJ's chapter in all its glory, as short as it is. (In reality, so much of this is her story, too. But this is really her chapter alone. Peter is in it, but he's only in it for her, only appearing to say her name, even.) 

I could have written a cheesy poem and called it "Ode to MJ" instead of making this chapter. Review me and tell me if you like this chapter better than a crappy poem. *begs on her knees* Yeah, that's right, review! *growls* I still only got about 5 or 6, though it's an improvement. I am in love with my reviewers. You are the strength that keeps me writing and inspires me. You're amazing. 


	6. Transition Between Notes On A Grand Pian...

**Days of Pretending **

by Blu Wynd Faerie

rated PG-13

_Chapter 6: Transition Between Notes on a Grand Piano_

Excerpt from a letter from Peter Parker to May Parker, written approximately a week after the previous episode:

_Yes, I'm dating Mary Jane. Who told you? Her mom told you, maybe. No, I wasn't hiding it from you; I just hadn't told you yet. Irregardless, let's move onto your other pressing questions. _

_Yes, we are happy together. I am so glad that I'm with her. She's absolutely amazing in every sense and I must admit I'm madly in love with her. We've been going out in the park on walks, seeing movies, playing board games in small cafes. It's all very nice and quiet, and somehow Mary Jane has come to think I'm some sort of a romantic! Heck, I'm only Peter Parker. _

_MJ is doing really well, and she had a good audition the other day. She was auditioning for a part in a play at a downtown theater. She sends her best wishes and said she wants to set up a date to come visit and have some of your legendary pie. I might as well come, too. Leftovers from the pizza place down the corner are getting very, very old. Harry's doing as well as can be expected after his dad's death. He's coping and moving on, thankfully.  He thanks you for your prayers. _

_And, finally, Aunt May, you really are nosy. You shouldn't ask questions like that! Have I kissed her yet, you ask? My question for you, dear Aunt, is, "What do you think?"_

_~~~_

Excerpt from Mary Jane Watson's journal, written approximately two days after the previous entry:

_I had a very good day today. Peter and I went out to lunch. He let me pay for myself so I wouldn't feel bad, and he carried that far-off gaze all throughout the meal. I know what he was doing; he was watching me, admiring me from across the table. He always gets like that when he stares at me. It's as frightening as it is amazing. I cannot decide whether to feel pressured by the enormity of his affection or flattered. I feel both. _

_Peter, Peter, with that boyish smile and your gentle, soothing hands! Peter, with that softness in your eyes, could you be any more near perfect? Peter, how can I be so unworthy, so ungrateful? I need you, but is it too much? _

_Are we obsessed with each other? Maybe that's not healthy. _

_"Talk to me, Peter. Come closer," I can imagine myself saying. I fall in love with him all over again, and it makes me want him even more badly, makes me need more, makes me satisfied with even less. "Peter, is there a limit to love? Can there be too much?"_

_"Never," he will say. "If anything, I cannot love you enough." Or something like that. _

_That's the scary part. It's not enough. Nothing is enough. _

_I want to be with him every single day, every single moment. It hurts me to hear him talk about other people on the phone, like Harry or co-workers or his boss, but certainly Spider-man, that little nit-picking bastard. Yes, my words are harsh. But my words are true, and that's what I feel. I cannot stand him. _

_"Mary Jane, I can't come," he said to me last night over the telephone. _

_"Something's come up?" I asked him, and he told me that there was a bank robbery. Goodbye, candlelit dinner. _

_God, it kills me every time. It's happened a few times already, and it gets progressively worse. Why do criminals chose the nights that we have dates to attack this ugly city? Or there are late nights, nights when I feel so lonely, and I call, but he's not home yet, because he's off cavorting with Spider-man, who leads him around like some tragic puppy. And then he comes back ill and sick, wasted by the second personage. It's a demon taking over his body. I dream nightmares about Peter being eaten alive by Spider-man, and in the morning there is nothing but the haunted mask. _

_And it's something I cannot explain, like I'm jealous of a bug. I do not feel abandoned by him, and yet I do. He tries so hard. He gives too much, it hurts him as it shakes him loose. Peter, that boy, does all he can for me. And I still ache when I miss him as I lie half-awake, dreaming reveries of holding him, interrupted by the screaming television and images of him dying like a drowning rat in the muck of this ugly city that chains him, that chains Spider-man, that chains me. _

_I feel like he's half-dying, and I'm the rotting half he left behind. That's what it's like. _

_Wouldn't that upset you? Of course not. You're a goddamned journal. _

_~~~_

"Happy two-month anniversary," Peter remarked cheerfully. He clinked together wine glasses with her, and she smirked in that romantic way that he loved, and for a moment he thought he saw the same look in her eyes that he usually held in his; that look of absolute adoration, almost a look of humble worship. It made him tremble with a casual sort of fear, a fear he didn't really dislike, but rather was comfortable with. That feeling thrilled him. 

"Same to you; happy two-months!" Mary Jane shot back at him gleefully. She leaned across the table to kiss his lips swiftly and passionately, very intentionally. "I love you."

"I love you," Peter replied, kissing her back, his lips dragging over her red, red mouth. They sipped simultaneously, watching each other excitedly over their glasses of white wine. Peter could not help to admire her absolute beauty; her hair was swept up and back in a braided bun that looked very sophisticated, and her red dress and redder shoes and reddest hair made her look splendid in her pale complexion, like she was a gorgeous and untainted porcelain doll on a shelf. 

Mary Jane made him melt. She made him feel human, yet angelic, and at the same time, he felt like nothing. He was nothing but air! 

"Peter, this is such a fancy restaurant.  You really shouldn't have," Mary Jane insisted, though she was very much delighted with the elegance of the tablecloths and the waiter with French accents. It certainly beat the diner any day. 

"Tell me, since when do I ever go by what I should or should not do?"  Peter took her hand across the table, and she blushed in a teenaged manner, as if she was on a first date with her first love. 

"Never. That's why I love you," she responded. She squeezed his hand and winked across the table, and for a moment they were absolutely perfect, absolutely happy. She almost forgot that he was Spider-man; Mary Jane almost forgot that she cried sometimes, that there had been periods in her life when she had felt sadness. She felt like she was only herself at that moment, like there was only the present Mary Jane who had ever existed. It was like pure, sheer ecstasy. 

There was only Peter and Mary Jane at the table. No one else. The wine glimmered like gold, and she felt like Midas under his eyes, and she felt like a Greek goddess under his smile, and then for a long breath it frightened her deep inside of her soul. She felt dirty because of it, because she had prayed for it, and she had it, and she did not feel deserving of it anymore. She had what she wanted, only Peter at the table, and she felt like she had stolen from God himself.

"You have beautiful eyes," she said to him softly, and looked away.

~~~ 

Excerpt from Peter Parker's journal, written approximately a week their two-month anniversary: 

_Damn. I was late for a date with Mary Jane tonight. We went to go see a movie, but there was a hold-up in a small liquor store and I had to lend my hands. I hate criminals. I hate this. _

_We weren't late or anything. We didn't miss any of the movie. In fact, Mary Jane seemed to really enjoy it. It was some romantic comedy, something mushy and obviously chosen by her. She laughed at me to see me cry at the end when the heroine died, and she kissed me softly and held my hands and shushed me and gave me tissues. I felt there for a minute in the back of the theater like I didn't have to be Spider-man to make a difference, because I was at least something to her, and that was a difference enough. And, yet, no. It doesn't work like that._

_But she cried, too. _

_~~~_

Excerpt from Mary Jane Watson's journal, written approximately a week after their two-month anniversary: 

_I called Peter today, thanked him for taking me to the movies. My jacket smells like him, because he leaned in my arms and cried nearly all the way home in the taxi._

_ "It's not fair for her to die!" he kept whispering back at me, and it was then that I realized that it was what he feared what might happen to me. It must have brought back a painful fear for him. I felt bad for snickering at his display of emotions, which were so unmanly but he didn't care, and instead lent him a packet of tissues and tried to calm him down. _

_I told him that he shouldn't worry. I told him it wouldn't happen to me; heroines die in the movies, but I know I won't, because I trust him. I will not die because I love him too much to let myself die. _

_"Here's a tissue," he said to me, and I wiped my eyes. _

_I couldn't put a finger on why I was crying. And I didn't think it was the movie, or the way he was crying either. I thought, maybe, that I was crying because I am dying because I do love him too much. We're dying, because of me, and because there are times when I love him too much so that it kills me instead of saving me. _

_Am I dying? What am I saying? I didn't mean it. I am not dying. I will not die because of you, Peter. That is what you do not want. It is what you feared. I have to be strength, and I have to be hope, even when I can't be. I must to make up for what you aren't to me. _

_~~~_

Excerpt from Mary Jane Watson's journal, written approximately three days after the previous entry: 

_I have a picture on my wall. Peter had a camera when we were walking in the park the other day. He handed it off to a clumsy passerby who nearly dropped it, but the woman somehow managed to snap a decent picture of me and Peter. In fact, it's more than decent. Maybe the klutzy manner was only an act; her photography skills were pretty good. It's a great photo of us, with Peter and I leaning against each other, wrapped in each other's arms, the wind blowing all around, our scarves wrapping around each other. I love it. Peter framed it for me, and he gave it to me today, and I showered him with hugs and kisses for it. I look at it whenever I have a spare second, take it down, get lost in the look in his eyes in that precise moment. _

_Peter really looks quite possessive of me. _

_I don't blame him. I, too, look quite possessive of him. And it's so damn unhealthy. _

~~~ 

Excerpt from Peter Parker's journal, approximately two weeks after the previous entry: 

_Sometimes Harry comes in. I know, because I see him, hear him breathing. Once I rolled over and turned around to look at him really hard, and he must have seen the tears on my face. His dim outline in the door was casual, yet shriveled, as if he had been struck by lightning. _

_"Go to sleep," he said to me. "I need to get up early." And I know he didn't know what to say to me right then. _

_When Mary Jane looks at me sometimes, I feel like I have failed her. But I can only stretch so far. Mary Jane, I cannot stretch much farther. Do you want me to snap? Because I just might, under the strain of your odd, foreign looks, the ones that make me guilty for everything I just can't be. _

_Mary Jane looks at me like she loves me right then, but like she hated me the night before._

~~~

"I heard it was supposed to snow," she commented with a smile, wrapping her gloved hand in Peter's. A twinkle in her eyes stressed her love of the winter weather, its blustery tendencies, the ways it encouraged snuggling and hot cocoa and love inside on cold days. 

"Snow? No," he said, grinning at he realized he rhymed. "Maybe tomorrow," he added, stressing the last syllable to continue the rhythm. Mary Jane laughed at Peter and elbowed him playfully. They wove across the paved sidewalk as they nudged each other, their joyous sounds reaching the ears of residents a few blocks down on the lonely night. 

"You're such a dork!" she laughed, jumping in front of him and putting her hands on his cold cheeks. They burned red with the chill and his embarrassment at being called such a name. There was a passion in his eyes, as if he knew what came next. 

"I am?" he asked, aghast, his eyes gaping. "No way!" Peter wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her close abruptly, somewhat jerkily, needing her warm in the cold night, feeling indifferent to the icy rain that started to pelt them from above, like falling rock-hard stars. They came closer together, his fingertips brushing her spine softly, his lips tempted to not allow her to finish her sentence, to cut off words that could not express enough what she felt. 

"You are, both you and your rhyming," the redhead whispered huskily, rubbing noses with him. "But I love you still, and even more because of it, you intelligent creature you." She met his mouth, lips touching his deeply and passionately, her hands winding into his frosty hair, leather against skin and waves, the only real flesh-to-flesh contact in their lips. 

_There is too much I cannot tell you. There are not enough times like these, she thought. _

The young lovers broke apart. "Ow!" Peter hissed as a ball of hail pelted him on the shoulder. Sympathetically, Mary Jane reached to touch the would-be bruise, but she was immediately struck by a larger ice ball on her hand, causing her to withdraw. 

She squeaked. "We have to get out of here!" she said, grabbing Peter's hand from his shoulder, where he rubbed the new sore. Mary Jane dragged him down a side street, frenetic yet blasé eyes searching for a refuge. 

"Wait!" Peter said, suddenly taking control and leading her down another road. They scurried along, shrieking and laughing as they fled a maelstrom of hail, laughter ringing across the street and bouncing off the buildings. Peter pointed to a white building at the corner and they made a mad dash for its welcoming archway. Like rabid panthers, soaked in the jungle rains, they burst in through the unlocked mahogany doors. 

"Sanctuary!" Mary Jane cried thankfully, and it echoed off of the walls of the chapel, shivered in the chilled stained glass windows, and was swallowed behind the altar. 

"A church? You took me to a church?" Mary Jane asked, surprised. "I didn't think you were terribly religious."

"I am when the weather's bad," Peter replied, winking at her and intertwining their cold fingers. "Anyway, I meant to take you to a lounge for this, but a dark chapel will have to do instead." Peter subsequently yanked off his backpack and dropped it to the floor before pulling out a canteen and two plastic mugs. "Hot cocoa?" he asked her. 

_Don't do it. Don't make me fall in love with you anymore. If I fall in love with you anymore, I might explode with my passion. There might be too little of you, she thought with a vengeance, her naked brain and heart exposed and bloody in her anguish. Her internal struggle made her bleed. __Once he feared loving me, because he thought he would hurt me. Now, I fear loving him, because I think it will hurt him. Damn! _

"Oh, Peter, you shouldn't have," she remarked solemnly. Peter's breath caught in his throat when he saw that same ghostly look in her eyes, the look he didn't know, the look he knew had not gone away yet. She smiled and the look ran away like some maniac fleeing a crime scene; he'd seen that face, that face of guilt and fear and self-loathing. 

"I'll have some, please," she requested quietly. He smiled back, brushing away insecurity, and poured them drinks. They sat on the floor in the middle of the aisle and Mary curled up against him, sipping her cocoa, her legs winding around his like alien vines, and she searched for comfort in him as she hid from him. 

"There's a piano here," he whispered softly to her.

"I like the piano," she remarked childishly, and unfolded herself from Peter's body.  "Where is it?" When Peter pointed to a far corner, Mary Jane arose stiffly and wandered over to it. There was dust on its wood, on its unpolished keys. She touched its first key, and the loud, deep sound was music to her ears. 

His arms slid around his lover's waist.  "Can you play?" he asked her ear. 

"No," she answered quietly, her eyes forlorn, feeling like his skin was not enough, like his body was not big enough for his spirit. "Do you?"

Peter chuckled. "No. No, I don't either." 

Mary Jane's fingers strummed across the keys, tapping them lightly in a melody she made up off of the top of her head. "Peter, I have a question," she began to say, her eyebrows knitting together. 

"Just play something," he said. 

Mary Jane ran her hands over the keys, letting the sounds flow together along the bright blue and yellow windows. Peter's hands ran up her arms, his palms on the back of her hands, following the motions. They were so close, yet never close enough. She didn't know what she was trying to play. It didn't matter.

The room was dark, and there were no candles lit, only their vague, shadowy gray bodies whispering in the midst of the blackness, brought to some light by the clouded windows. There were lips on her neck, all over, everywhere at once. He was humming a tune as he kissed her cheeks, his hands strumming on her stomach, his eyelashes brushing against her skin. Peter was against her, and she leaned back against him, eyes closing, and she felt young and new and so in love with him, and she loved being with him, and it made her cry, because it felt so wrong, like she was hurting him by being unable to accept him. The tears ran fluidly down her cheeks, and he felt them, knowing something was wrong, but Peter kissed away Mary Jane's gentle water droplets and caressed her with previously unshed words. Their hardly saintly acts in the very sacred place were sacrilege, sacrilege that was as sinful as it was healing. It was a cathedral, and there they were, loving and growing as they broke Catholic laws about boundaries of love and property and such. 

Mary Jane opened her mouth to say something, but Peter swiftly reached up and turned her head back a little so that he might kiss the corner of her mouth. She twisted in his arms, not able to feel enough of him against her. She leaned back onto the piano, and it drummed loudly as she hit the keys in awkward places. 

Peter could not see her, but only feel her. He felt her crying, sobbing, even, at moments. She loved him that much. _Mary Jane, this is all I have to give to you right now. There's nothing more I can do than hold you until someone else wants me to hold them. Please, don't cry. Don't cry, Peter, he demanded of himself. _

~~~ 

The priest came into the church in the morning. "Get out," he said upon discovering Mary Jane and Peter sleeping together, warm in the pews. 

"Get out! What the hell do you think you kids are doing? Out! Out! This is a house of God, not a whorehouse," he scolded harshly, his face going purple and spotted. He was unkind, the veins popping out of his head in his rage. Mary Jane and Peter rolled off of the pew, stumbled for their mugs and emptied canteen, and shoved the articles into the backpack, scurrying out of the building like worried church mice. 

~~~ 

Excerpt from Mary Jane Watson's journal, written approximately a week after the previous episode: 

_That was nice, in the cathedral. I could not have been happier. I was with Peter all night, longer than I had ever been with him for one period. I fell asleep in his arms, listening to him breathe, listening to him say how much he loved me a million times over. I felt so good, I felt so needed, and I felt like a part of him. I heard pianos in my sleep, the notes changing. I dreamed blue oceans and yellowed, faded, parchment suns; I dreamed of eternity in his eyes._

_I could not have been more upset. It reminded me of things I had forgotten. It made me feel like I needed to catch up to Peter. I felt like I was so not a part of his life, because this was something rare. Usually I spend time with him, go home. I got to stay. I got to be there, like I was one with him. And it was new and strange, and that meant it wasn't regular. I want it to be regular; but we were just lucky. _

_I could have woken up in the middle of the night, alone on the pew. Peter could have gone off to fight another suited demon, another rapist, another awful mastermind criminal. I would have gone home, or maybe stayed to pray, or something. I don't know. I ought to be thankful for that; instead, I only want to return to the church again._

_Peter, what do I do? There's something that I need. There's someplace where I need to go to get back to that moment when being with you for an instant was enough. _

_I am greedy, worthless, too easily moved._

_I am overly emotional, overly sensitive, and overly clingy. Not admirable traits in a girl like me, are they? _

_I'm so, so harsh on you, so harsh on myself. What do I do to go back to the way I used to be? Make me revert. Convert me to the old ways. _

_When I kissed you under the red windows, and our cocoa mugs were empty, I thought to myself, "I am content in your arms, in your kiss, under your grace. I am happy. Just take me here, take me away." I just wanted your everything. What's unhealthy with that? And then I thought, "Take yourself away from everything," and that was something wrong to even think of vaguely. It was like I didn't love you. _

_How odd is that. I do love you, don't I? And, yet, I didn't there; I didn't want you to be a part of you, or something. Maybe, perhaps, does this have to do with the fact that it's not just that I can't accept your commitments, but I cannot accept who you are? _

_I can't accept you. How can I love you? _

_I am so confused. I don't like myself right now, because I don't feel like I know myself. I don't think I know anything._

_~~~ _

Excerpt from Mary Jane Watson's journal, date unknown, date unimportant: 

_I feel like there is a revolution going on inside of me. I don't like it, not at all. I am not changing for the better, but for the worst. I feel like I am becoming a danger to myself. I am becoming a selfish brat. But, if it were only that, I would be happy. More than becoming spoiled, I am becoming unappreciative. _

_I can't remember when it started. I think it might have started the day that he took off his costume, but maybe it was only then that I realized it and it had been going on long before. It was like Peter had become only himself, with no attachments. And I liked having no attachments, no worries, no troubles. That was heaven for me. And, now, I want it back. I will take nothing less._

_I love Peter. I have never loved one person more in all my life. In fact, the love I have for Peter alone surpasses the love I have had for the rest of entire world. And, yet, I am insatiable. Why can't I disregard the little things? He warned me that he wasn't perfect. I am unable to accept less than perfect from him. _

_And it's not him, you see? He is as close to perfect as a human can be. Do I expect him to be a god, a saint? Of course I shouldn't, but I do. It's like – it's something I can't even explain. I don't know. My brain's cluttered right now. It's like I want him to always be waiting, and I cannot wait for him. It's like I want to be dominant instead of equal. It's like I'm so obsessed with loving him that I cannot get enough of it. _

_That's not just my problem, either. It becomes our problem now.  Now Peter sees my annoyance, and he feels bad for it, in that caring way of his. _

_I am actress. I can pretend that it doesn't bother me. But, in my heart, I can't fake it. _

~~~

"It's romantic," she said, "to be all alone with candles." The walls answered her with their white, sad silence, the kind that listened and saw but did not speak. Walls could not console a crying young woman. 

Mary Jane wandered from the table. A table of one was far too lonely for her tastes. She flicked off the oven, knowing that she could save the leftovers of her masterpiece later, when she felt up to it. Right then she didn't feel like doing much of anything except for going into her room and curling up under the covers and letting herself be sad for a change instead of bottling it up under her plastic actress's grin. 

So she did.

Mary Jane did not bother to turn on the lights. She simply wandered aimlessly into the room and pulled back the deep red covers and crawled underneath the thick comforter. The room was very dark, with the cream-colored blinds yanked closed so that even streetlamps and traffic signals didn't invade her sleeping space; the blackness invaded as she yanked the covers over her head. 

_I have to sleep, so that I cannot think. She did not want to have to lie awake and ponder things she didn't want to know the answers to. __God, fate, sandman, whatever you are, let me sleep.  She closed her eyes tightly and nothing seeped in, so her eyelids swarmed around the color of black and drowned out her consciousness. _

Mary Jane did not sleep well at all. In her nightmare, she was sitting on the floor in a barren white room. A boy was sitting at one end of a table, which had something on top of it, which was covered with a sheet. He clutched a doll to his chest, hugging it tenderly. The boy looked like Peter at a very young age, before she had known him, where he was three or so. He was the pictures she had seen hanging on the walls of his aunt's house, the faded photographs, the old days when he had not carried the burdens he carried now.

"What's your name?" he said in a childish voice. He hugged the doll tighter. 

"Mary Jane. What's yours?"

"They say I'm dead," said the boy coldly, rising from his cross-legged position on the edge of the table. He hopped down and waddled to the other end, grabbing a fistful of cloth. Mary Jane cocked her head as she watched him with a blind terror creeping past her eyes and dragging down the corners of her mouth. The young boy yanked back the cover from the table, letting the sheet fall to the floor. "See?"

Mary Jane stumbled back, shrieking as she hit the wall behind her, scooting on her rear with panicked hands guiding her frantic form. Peter's dead, blank eyes stared back at her, sweat still running into them from exertion. He had not been dead long. The eyes, though, were what struck her most harshly; they  did not blink, and they did not move. They merely watched her, unseeing, scaring her so that the pit of her stomach dropped out. His blue eyes, once so beautiful, were lifeless, and in their death they lost their preciousness. 

"He died trying to save you!" laughed the boy, his eyes rolling up back into his head as he threw his teddy bear at her. She rolled away from it, cowering in a corner as the menace of a boy screamed his delight.   
  


"Go away!" she yelled at the boy. 

"No!" he said in a voice that was too forceful to be that of a toddler. "I died trying to save you. Can't you just hold me now, please?" He fell to his knees, crawling towards her babyishly. She lashed out at him with her heel, sending him sprawling into the wall. She was immediately ashamed of what she had done as he hit the floor with a strained cry. 

The dead body blinked. 

Mary Jane shot up in her bed, panting, her eyes searching in vain through the darkness. _Light! her brain screamed, and she tripped out of the bed to the door, flinging it open with a vengeance and letting in the kitchen light. She couldn't breathe, and she was crying, and her throat was sore, and she knew she had been wailing in her sleep, because someone was ringing the doorbell to be sure she was alright. _

~~~ 

Excerpt from Mary Jane Watson's journal, written approximately a day after then previous episode: 

_I am not alright. _

_~~~ _

Peter sat with his face staring blank into a cup of blank coffee; he wasn't at Moon Dance, daring to not face her there. He sipped the hot liquid very quietly, feeling the hot, scalding pain, feeling cold. The day was icky, rainy, sickening in its stillness. 

Peter was the only one at the place so late in the night. The waitress, who was a busty blonde with bubblegum in her mouth, turned on the radio. She could have cared less if she disturbed him or not. She sighed romantically as a piano started to play in the background, fading with the voice of the disc jockey. 

"Here's Ben Folds Five and their song, 'Brick.' Easy listening, right here, on 93NYC," he said in a suave tone, the melting sounds flickering with slightly poor reception. The waitress swooned and danced around with her mop, her bleached hair falling into her eyes. Peter looked away, slightly embarrassed for her. 

_6 a.m.__, day after Christmas   
I throw some clothes on in the dark   
The smell of cold   
Car seat is freezing   
The world is sleeping   
I am numb _

"One of my favorite songs," the waitress told him. Peter hadn't noticed, but she had seized her pad and paper in exchange for her romantic house-cleaning tool. "You like it?"

"I've never… I've never heard of it before," Peter responded brokenly, flustered. 

"Yeah. Good song. Another coffee?" 

"Please," Peter replied, shaking off uneasiness. 

  
_Up the stairs to her apartment   
She is balled up on the couch   
Her mom and dad went down to Charlotte   
They're not home to find us out   
And we drive   
Now that I have found someone   
I'm feeling more alone   
Than I ever have before _

"You look lonely," said the waitress in a saucy voice, her lashes fluttering as she set down the steaming cup of black liquid. Peter eyed her suspiciously, the blue meeting her brown. 

"I'm not looking for someone," Peter told her very sternly. However, he did not deny her statement. A disappointed look crossed her features, and she pouted. 

"It's a shame. You have such pretty eyes," the waitress commented, leaning on the table. 

Peter rose up from his seat with the passion trembling behind his gaze, his fingers fumbling for money. He shoved a five-dollar bill into her hands. "Keep the change," he stuttered, unable to meet her eyes, because he felt dirty doing so. Peter pushed by her, careful not to touch her. 

_  
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly _

_Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere_

_She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly_

"Your drink!" the waitress called after him, grabbing the drink, some of it spilling onto her creamy white hand. "You forgot it!" 

Peter stopped in his tracks, but he couldn't look back. "I don't want it," he replied to the woman, his voice shaking audibly. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. 

  
_They call her name at __7:30__   
I pace around the parking lot   
Then I walk down to buy her flowers   
And sell some gifts that I got _

"I'm sorry," she said in a very soft voice. She yanked some napkins out of her apron, a few fluttering to the ground unceremoniously. "Take these, to wipe your eyes with, or something." 

Peter didn't look back still. "No, no, I'm quite alright," he assured her with a voice that certainly was not alright. "Really." He pushed open the glass door and went out into the cold, black night, watching the streetlights flicker as the light bulbs died. He was very uncomfortable as rain pelted the back of his head. Peter drew his coat tighter around himself and walked on. 

_  
Can't you see?   
It's not me you're dying for   
Now she's feeling more alone   
__Than she ever has before_

"Mary Jane," he whispered to the night, longing for her distant touch. "Mary Jane," he repeated, thinking that maybe she could hear him from somewhere across the city.  He saw her eyes upon his face, saw her smirking smile, saw the red hair across the back of his hands. The air smelled like her from far away; it was like when she entered a room and he just knew she was there, even without seeing her. Mary Jane was everywhere on his mind. 

He could hear cathedral bells singing from a few blocks away. 

_   
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly   
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere   
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly _

Ten minutes later he pushed open the door to the chapel. It was seemingly empty. Someone had started to set up poinsettias for the holiday season, and a few sat on the altar. He stepped in, closing the door behind him. The bells had ceased their loud ringing, and a vacant stillness had descended on the dark place. 

Peter walked down the aisle, but he was hardly getting married. He knew that he was not alone. Carefully, with some caution, Peter stepped up to the altar and put both hands on it, feeling the smooth woodwork. Keeping his left palm on it, he rounded the corner of the altar. A figure was sitting behind it, leaning on the back of the wood. Her eyes lifted, and Mary Jane met Peter's expectant gaze.

_  
As weeks went by   
It showed that she was not fine   
They told me, "Son, it's time to tell the truth."   
She broke down and I broke down   
Cause I was tired of lying _

"Hi," he said. His voice was monotone.

"Hi," she said. Her eyes were teary.

"Am I bothering you?" he asked very calmly. 

"No, not at all," she responded, looking at her tennis shoes. "I was just thinking, that's all." 

Peter fell to his knees in front of her. Mary Jane's eyes rose, and there were tears running in rivulets down her face still, and she bit her lip with an anxious fear. She crawled into his lap and his open arms and huddled there._  
  
_

_Driving back to her apartment   
For the moment we're alone   
She's alone   
I'm alone   
Now I know it_

They rocked back and forth, and Mary Jane was humming church songs, muffled by Peter's shirt. He buried his face in her hair, kissing the crown of her head, running his fingers across her ribs and wrists, her vulnerable spots. 

"I love you," he whispered to her ear, liking the melody of the sound and thinking that it completed the moment. She only nodded. 

_She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly   
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere   
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly_

_~~~ _

AN: Wow. I'm amazed! I've finished this chapter! *cheers* Took me a while, huh? Well, I'm sorry. Blame my history teacher. Still, I'm really proud of this chapter. It's very disjointed, and for a while I didn't even like it, but now I do, and I'm pleased. It underwent so many re-doings, though. 

The song is Ben Folds Five's "Brick." I didn't want to do a songfic, but I couldn't help it! AGH! Geez, I broke my own rules. 

Again, all standard disclaimers apply. 

There is more to come. Be alert. 


	7. The Giving

**Days of Pretending **

_Chapter 7: The Giving_

Lifelessly, exhausted, he clicked the key into place and swung the door open. He tossed the mail onto the table, hung up his jacket in the closet, and sat down to check the mail before realizing that somebody was sitting on the couch, watching, waiting.

"Mary Jane," he said with surprise, his eyes meeting her own.

"Hi, Peter," she replied softly with the smallest of smiles. She was not pleased.

"How did you get in here?" he asked, rising from his seat.

She held up a key. "Harry gave it to me a long time ago," she answered briefly in a voice that was not her own. _Do you remember him, Peter? Do you remember I was with him once? Does that make you jealous? You look hurt. Will it make you remember next time? she thought bitterly, offended by the fact that he had not come to the movies two nights ago. She had waited for an hour, sitting in the New York City cold, watching the neon lights flash on the wetness on her cheeks. She had given up; James Bond would have to wait for them. Would it do her good to guilt him into coming next time? _

The moment she saw the real detachment in his eyes, she wanted to take it back. 

"Oh." 

"You can have it back," she replied quickly, rising and stepping across the room to him.  She dangled it in front of his eyes, the brass shining, the symbol bright like the sun. 

"Keep it," he said, pushing it away. "I wanted to give you a key in the first place."

She nodded, putting it back in her pocket, hearing the familiar clinking. She generally liked its sound, the things it symbolized, and the entrance it gave her. It made her feel rotten inside, though, when she thought of how she had just used that same well-meaning key against Peter. _Don't taunt him. Talk to him. That's why you're here. _

"I missed you last night," she told him, biting her lip and meeting his eyes. 

"I… I'm sorry. There was a robbery. I couldn't make it," Peter apologized with a frown, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking down. 

Mary Jane folded her hands in front of her, scuffing a bare foot across the floor. "I was really upset when you didn't come. I had been waiting for you all day, and I… I don't know. It just really was… oh, I don't know. It hurt, that's all," she explained brokenly. _I love you. But are you less committed than me? Why is this happening to us? Are we falling apart? The thought struck fear into her heart, a fear blacker than night and death._

"I'm really sorry, Mary Jane," he repeated, coming a step closer. "Please forgive me. Please try to understand. But there were all those people, and they were afraid, and I couldn't turn away from them." _I can't cry. I can't cry. But I feel that there's nothing left for us. I can't read her eyes like I used to. Where's the light in them? He laid a hand on her shoulder, as if it might make her more compassionate._

A fear she was unfamiliar with latched on to her brain. She felt like screaming. So, was this the wall? Could she ever become the first thing in his life? Would she always be just the sideshow to Spider-man? He had warned her of this, but just then Mary Jane wasn't sure if she was ready for it still. 

Mary Jane was angry. She was furious, in fact; she hated Spider-man and everything he was, because he took Peter away from her. It was almost traitorous, after all the superhero had done for her, but her heart rebelled and replied that she would have rather died than live in his shadow. A part of her thrashed in her fury, and another writhed in her paralysis, her terror. She could never let Spider-man drag Peter away.

"So you turned away from me instead?" she asked suddenly, meeting his eyes harshly. Immediately after she said it, she backed up, and Peter's hand fell from her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I… I never should have said it." She turned away, facing the wall, bracing her shaky hands against it. "It's just that-" she began, but she stopped, clenching her teeth. "It's just that I want more than you're willing to give."

"What, would you rather have let those people shiver there in fear and be robbed, maybe even murdered?" he asked in a slightly harsher voice, startled and horrified.  _Who are you, and what have you done with my Mary Jane? he asked himself. __When did you grow cold, like me?_

"No, no," she explained, resting her forehead on the wall. "I'm sorry," she reiterated, pounding her fist on the wall. Peter laid a hand on her back to comfort her, but Mary Jane whirled on him, her eyes teary.  

"I warned you about this before everything," Peter reminded her in a chiding voice. "I told you about who I was, my goals, my responsibilities. You said you would accept that. Why can't you?" 

"I don't know. What's wrong with me?" she asked herself, wiping her eyes. "I guess I'm just too selfish, wanting you all for myself." 

Peter told her gently, "I don't think that I can belong all to one person. Part of me belongs to Aunt May, to Harry, to Spider-man, even." The name made her shiver. "It's not my fault, either. I get pulled in so many directions, and I want to go most to you, but I just can't, not when everyone else is pulling on me, too." The look reflected in his lover's eyes was not a happy one still.  He bit his trembling lip and inched towards her a little more. "Please don't be angry with me. That doesn't mean I don't love you, Mary Jane, because I do love you." 

Mary Jane looked up into his watery blue eyes and nodded, trying to hold back her tears. "I know. I love you, too," she whispered, holding out her arms to him and collapsing into his hold. She buried her face in his shoulder and wept for one very long minute while Peter ran his hands up and down her back, through the rich red hair that he loved so, shushing her with his soft voice. "Don't cry, Mary Jane," he cooed. "Please don't cry."

"I'm scared," she sniffled into his collar. "I'm scared of what's becoming of us." 

"So am I," he said, feeling aloof. Were they not in charge of their own destinies? Wouldn't they be able to work it out if they wanted to? He denied it. He wanted to believe. "But, I think we can work things out. We're committed to each other. We want to work this out. Surely that's enough. We're in control of what happens here."

She didn't feel very in control, but she trusted Peter and nodded. She drew back her head to look up at his face, seeing the worry he held there for her in his eyes. Suddenly, in a blind passion, Mary Jane felt a longing for Peter. She loved him so much that it ached inside when he was gone, and just then, their bond was deeper yet weaker, and it only brought all of her emotions to the surface. Mary Jane knew that if she was going to lose him, she was going to make the best of what they had before it ended. 

"I want to be in control," she told him, shifting under his gaze. "I don't want to lose what we have."

"Neither do I," Peter agreed. "We won't," he added determinedly. He was about to say something else, but giddy Mary Jane cut him off with a kiss, bringing her pink mouth onto his own swiftly and taking away all the breath he had saved to speak. He started to melt and drip as she softened him with her lips, molded him with her fingertips, hypnotized him with the sound of her breathing. 

"Keep going," she whispered haphazardly into his ear before kissing it. "Keep talking. Tell me things," Mary Jane commanded, her lips dragging over his jaw. Her fingers jumped over the back of his neck. Peter found it very, very difficult to speak when she was doing things like that. 

"We can… change what's happening-" Peter gasped brokenly. His rubber wrists disconnected with his hands, which slid down his lover's waist. "We don't have to… submit… to … anything." There was a pause. "I love you," he choked out choppily, abandoning his iron will. He was like jelly, completely raw and liquid. He broke the contact she had with his neck only to crash into her lips with undying fervor.

"Peter," she whispered into his mouth, "I'm not going anywhere." It was then that Peter realized that fantasy could become reality, that his morals were his own to choose, that he could break laws, even the ones he had set for himself. 

"Then don't," he suggested, breaking their kiss. His eyes met hers with a need that made her breath hitch, made her certain of the steps she took. Her fingers walked across his chest to the collar of his shirt, tugging on the white buttons. Peter watched her move with a sort of enchanted look, captivated by her eyes and hands. Down the hands went, unsnapping more buttons as they went.

Peter did not give her time to remove the shirt before embracing her again, lips meeting. _I know no bounds tonight, he thought, his hands roaming to places they did not understand. __I cannot know bounds tonight. _

_Peter, she thought as inaudible sounds escaped her lips, __let me take you away, right here, right now. I want to show you, know all of you inside… Her eyes met the red fabric. She had forgotten that he wore his Spider-man costume underneath his clothes. She did not like the way the spider on his chest stared back at her, the way it possessed him as it loomed directly over his heart. She met his eyes._

"Peter," she rasped, causing him to pause. "I want-" Her breath caught. 

"What do you want from me?" he asked her coolly, nuzzling into her neck.

"Just for tonight, I want you. All of you," she begged, her knees weakening. "I want none of your attachments, only Peter Parker himself."

He looked up, suddenly sober. "I am all yours," he said, touching her cheek with the back of his hand. Mary Jane wanted to cry until she turned blue from sobbing. She wanted to laugh and to take his breath away. The emotions she felt were eternal, undying, passionate and alive. She had never felt so happy to be living. The feeling welled up inside of her like a blooming flower in the dark, so radiant and full of vibrancy. 

She did not share him at all. 

_When I was younger and I knew that I loved you, Mary Jane, I never thought it would come to this. I never thought that I would find myself here tonight, holding you in my arms, belonging to you alone, thinking of nothing but the way you kiss, the way you look, the way you smile, the way you are. I never dreamed, even in my wildest, most drunken reveries that I could be loved by you._

_Peter, I am stronger because of you. I am more complete because you take away from me. Use me more to your advantage, because, somehow, that fills me up._

_I did not know that I had the ability to give myself to a person. Mary Jane, how is it that only you can claim me? What is it about you specifically that gives you the magic to unlock my heart and steal me away, the power to make me love you? When I kiss you, I think I can taste it, a distinct taste that is you._

_Your heartbeat is just like mine. The rhythm is exactly the same, somehow. I can feel it echoing inside of my head and my wrists, every fiber of me. I can hear it when I put my head on your chest, when my skin is on your skin. Can you hear it, Peter?_

_I cannot believe that I waited for this. Why did I not just claim you the first time I saw you, when I was but a child? Years have been wasted, years when we could have been lying like this, watching the sunrise because we did not sleep because we lost ourselves to each other. I cannot believe that I waited to lose myself to you._

_Peter, we will not end._

~~~

AN: Yeah, well, maybe I'm overly romantic. But you know you like it. 

Yes, it's pretty risqué, pretty sensual. It was never intended to be that way. But at the end, I was listening to this really pretty Enya song ("May It Be" from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack), and Enya's music always makes me mushy inside, and things just happened to turn out all romantic. Cut me some slack here! It's not my fault! 

I actually wrote this chapter prior to chapter 4. I jumped around a lot on this. I approve of my ending, but this is not the end of the story by any means! (I don' t think there is ever an end to Peter and MJ's relationship. After all, even if they break up, wouldn't they keep on loving each other and have a relationship mentally?) Review, please! I'm begging! This is a multi-chapter story. It ought to have more reviews than this. 


	8. Hate

**Days of Pretending **

Rated PG-13

_Chapter 8: Hate _

"MJ, it's Peter. I just wanted to see you today, if possible. I love you so much. Please call me back. I love you," said the voice on the answering machine. Mary Jane smiled widely and played the message again, listening to the way he had absentmindedly repeated the fact that he loved her. 

"Today?" she giggled. "Why not now?" With that she swung open the door, snatched a coat, and ran down the stairs to the ground floor. A cab drove her to the apartment building that Peter lived at. The cabby fare was high, but the young woman was too delirious and sick with her love that she did not care. She paid him happily and bounded up the stairs. One week was too long to not see him.

Mary Jane unlocked the door to his apartment and entered, her eyes scanning the place for Peter. He didn't seem to be home, but his window was open, letting in icy winter air. She would have shut it, but she presumed that Peter was out as Spider-man saving someone. That fact ached, but Mary Jane left the open window as it was and sat on the couch, watching the pretty blue curtains fluttering in the chilly afternoon air. 

Five minutes passed. Them the curtains blew apart and the masked superhero entered in through the window with a majestic flip. He landed in a crouch, surveying the room. He caught Mary Jane's eyes. "Hi!" he said enthusiastically through the mask. She smiled back at him. 

A part of her was taken aback in the fact that he wore his costume, but she regretted that. Peter was underneath, right?

"Good afternoon," Mary Jane said, rising elegantly and closing the distance between them. "How are you, love of my life?" Peter crooned into her ear. She threw two arms around his neck and pressed her body against him, wishing that he was wearing anything but the Spider-man suit. It was digging into her skin, all the ridges making telltale indents. 

"Very good," she replied with a smile. "I've missed you, though." 

"So have I," Peter told her. She wished she might be able to see his eyes through the mask, but they were covered by those great silver shields that hid everything, as intended. She wanted to change that. 

"I've been thinking all day about you," she said softly, slipping a finger under the edge of the mask. "I've been remembering everything that happened a few nights ago, and wanting it all over again." Mary Jane pulled up the mask past his neck, up over his mouth. She kissed him, just as she had one rainy night months before, but she continued to take off the mask, proceeding to toss it wherever it landed. She did not care at all what happened to it. 

Peter's hands roamed up her back, but he paused in that motion to take off his gloves and drop them to the floor. Skin against skin felt so much better to them both than skin against fabric. It brought back so many memories for Mary Jane to feel Peter's fingertips swirling over the small of her back, tiptoeing underneath the edge of her blouse. 

They broke contact, looking into each other's eyes. _I love you, her brain and heart screamed. __I want to spend the rest of my life with you. "So this is heaven," she told him. Peter smirked and kissed her cheek lovingly. _

"Yes," he agreed. "Hold on, let me go get on some clothes." 

He vanished from her view as he ran into his room to throw on a shirt and pants. He emerged, very quickly, buttoning the top of his black polo shirt, the hem of it haphazardly tucked into his jeans. "Oh, my gloves and mask," he commented, bending over to pick the discarded mask. Peter held it and fiddled with it, watching the eyes watching him, before tucking it into a back pocket. The gloves went into the other. 

Mary Jane observed him as he moved gracefully and sophisticatedly across the living room, his form beautiful as it stirred up so many emotions in her gut. When Peter was finished, he shut the window and then he came to sit next to her on the couch, cuddling up against her as the chill of the room faded. 

"So, Mary Jane, did you enjoy yourself last Friday?" he asked her in a voice that made shivers run all over her back. She nodded vigorously, running her fingers over his knuckles, remembering things she would never forget in all of eternity. 

"I think I enjoyed you more than I enjoyed myself," she teased, toying with the wording. 

"Same," he said with a smirk and a deep red blush, burying his face into her shoulder. 

"Peter," Mary Jane said in a very soft voice, "I've been doing a lot of thinking today."

"Tell me about it," he said with genuine interest, resting his head on her shoulder and listening to her talk. 

"Well," she started with some uncertainty, "I was thinking about the future." She bit her lip nervously, unsure of what Peter's reaction might be. "I was wondering what might eventually become of us. Do you think we might get married?" 

In the heat of the night's passion, Mary Jane had seemingly blown off their conversation about their relationship, how it seemed to be fighting a losing battle against circumstances. She remembered, of course, but she felt a decision had been reached to not give up. And wasn't their attraction and pure, mutual love proof enough that they were really special? Didn't that mean they could stand up to the world? She dismissed the idea that they would end. That thought of failing had vanished with the sun the earlier evening. 

Peter looked up, his head lifting from her shoulder with a start. "Married?" he asked. 

She blushed. "Oh, I'm sorry I said it. We've been dating three months, and I'm already thinking about marriage-" she started, putting her hand over her eyes to shield their flickering embarrassment. 

"Marriage," Peter repeated. The thought turned over in his head. His young male mind exploded in a red and orange fireball at the concept of marrying Mary Jane. Peter could see her now, in the recesses of his imagination, her red hair loosening from the pins. She would laugh and say they pricked her head, and she would rebel in leaving her hair down for the wedding ceremony. They could have a little house with a garden full of roses. And it would be better than living next to each other like they had for years, because instead of waving goodnight through the window panes, there would not be a goodnight wave but a goodnight kiss as they snuggled into their own bed. And would there be children? _Mary Jane Parker, or maybe Watson-Parker. She would like to keep her name. Yes, Mary Jane Watson-Parker. It had a ring to it._

But the night's conversation had stuck with him. Though he had hope, he also had doubt. Peter had always been much more realistic than Mary Jane. He knew there would be trouble. He knew he might have to rush out of their bed at three in the morning to save a man from a burning building. He knew that maybe his kid would say, "Dad, I haven't seen you all day!" when he arrived home late that evening. Peter knew that at night, Mary Jane would stare at the ceiling and she would say very softly and emotionlessly, "Your girl missed you today, Peter." She would pause for dramatic effect and add, "And I don't mean your child. I mean me." And she would roll over and go to sleep and leave him hanging, and Peter would stay up all night feeling guilty for being himself. 

"I don't think I can take you there," he explained very calmly, his eyes looking past hers to some place she didn't understand. "I don't think I'm good enough for you."

"What are you talking about?" she asked him with uncertainty lingering on the edges of her voice. "Of course you are." She scooted towards him. "Peter, I love you. You love me. That alone fulfills me and makes me happy."

"Oh, I don't know." Peter shook his head and her and rubbed his temples. "I just don't know."

"Peter, don't you love me?" she asked with fear creeping into her tone. Blackness wore away at her center, paralyzing her, making her stomach roll with a pain and a torture she had never before experienced. What was it in his tone that did this to her? Was it his hesitation, his doubt?

"Mary Jane!" he exclaimed, meeting her eyes passionately. "Of course I love you. God, I love you. How could you think that I don't?" He almost fell off of his seat from the trembling all over him. _Have I not said it enough? Have I not shown it? Am I not proving it? This is truth, isn't it? I love Mary Jane, but I really cannot suffice._

"I'm sorry! You just sounded for a second there like you didn't know what you were saying, like you were unsure," she attempted to explain. Redeeming herself was not possible. He looked too hurt to be soothed by her words. "Peter, I take it back. I know you love me. I just… oh, I don't know. You looked like you might be doubting yourself." 

"Loving you has been the only thing I've been sure of for all my life," he whispered, closing in on her and taking her face in his hands. 

"Peter, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." 

He bit his lip. "The real question is if you love me." 

"Yes," Mary Jane answered him immediately, wondering why he questioned her. Was she giving off the name weird emotion that he had been emitting? "I will never stop loving you." 

"Why?" Peter asked her. "Why do you love me?" 

"Because," she began, choking. "Because you're Peter, that's why I love you. You are kind, gentle, caring, courageous, brave, supportive, golden-hearted, spiritual, and beautiful in all aspects. I have never met a person who feels like such a part of me, like such a chunk of my life. I have never met a person who can so… melt me with his smile, his charm, his wit. I have never felt like I had a home until… until I found you." Mary Jane wiped her streaming eyes, unsure of why she cried.  Some unnamed feeling bloomed in her heart. It was like a raw, uncontained passion that had no bounds, like she couldn't express enough of what she felt. It was a deep connection that was too beautiful to remain nonchalant about. It was almost a crying for joy, yet also for something else that she couldn't place and didn't want to place, something darker. "Peter, you are everything to me." 

Peter kissed her forehead and drew her sobbing form against his chest. "I don't understand how you can love me. I don't feel like I'm good enough." 

"You are, you are," Mary Jane repeated between her cries. 

"Then why are you crying?" 

She paused and halted her sniffing. "I don't know." It was then that it struck her. _I am crying because he's right. She dared to glance up at his eyes, which looked forlorn and apart from her. She felt it, too. _

Gone. He was gone from her. She loved Peter with all of her, with every fiber of her being. He was the best thing in her life. She craved him, but her thirst for him could not be quenched. He was so unfortunately right; he was falling from her. She could hear it in Peter's voice, the way he sometimes spilled himself into a pool that was alien and foreign. She could not get enough of him. It made her so easily offended when he had to rush away, and he hurt her when he couldn't make a date, and he could break her with a wrong or misspoken syllable. It was like he could not fill her cup, because he had to fill another. There was always that large red wall in front of them, that goddamn menace Spider-man, who would always be the middle man between their kisses. 

He was right. He was not good enough. She was dissatisfied. 

She sat up abruptly, jerking from his arms. "Peter," she gasped, her eyebrows knitted together in a pained way. "I'm sorry. It's my fault." She flung herself off of the couch and ran out of the door. She half-stumbled down the stairs, out of the door, into the winter night. _Why am I not satisfied with the everything I have from Peter? He gives me everything he can. And I am still not pleased. The streets were freezing. __I ask him to give me all of his time and effort, but he cannot give up Spider-man. It would be like giving up my career or my personality or my laughter. I ask him to leave part of himself for me. I give him challenges he cannot accept._

Mary Jane could not keep from moving onwards. She was breathless, but she kept going, running from what she knew was coming and what she didn't understand. She denied the little thoughts that crept into her brain, the ones that whispered that the biggest thing in her life had reached an end. She could not face them, and she sped up her pace.  _He is not too little for me. I am too big for him._

As she walked feverishly, shivering through the cold night, Mary Jane noticed a billboard out of the corner of her mind.  She stood on the street corner and the green hue of the traffic light flashed against her hair while she stood gazing at the advertisement. The billboard pictured two young lovers scantily dressed and draped over each other on a beach of white sand. It was an ad for some type of alcohol, but that fact was immaterial to her. Mary Jane could not peel her eyes away from the couple, their smiling faces, their bodies pressed against each other. They looked so happy, but they were only actors. It wasn't real, though it looked like it. Was it just her imagination, or did the air suddenly get colder as that billboard sucked her in?

She glanced away from it. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw Peter beside her. He was looking at the billboard with the same horrified expression. He caught her eye and turned his back to the frightening image. "Hi," he said awkwardly. He fidgeted a little. 

"Hello," she answered. She couldn't speak his name. An unbroken silence hung in the air. 

"It's snowing," Mary Jane said suddenly, unable to stand the quiet. Indeed, it had begun to snow. They both looked up. The streetlamp bounced off the glistening flakes as they fell, casting irregular sparkles across their faces. The lamp flickered slightly as the bulb slowly died.

"It's over?" she said bluntly. It was more of a statement than a question. She could deny the demons inside of her no longer. Mary Jane could not meet his eyes and so she continued to watch the snow fall, looking up and away to greater places than where she was.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so." He looked at his soaked shoes. The gashes on his insides were reopening. He wanted to cry because he was Peter, and Peter was Spider-man, and even he, the man in control of himself, could not control that.

"There are no second chances?"  
  


"I… I don't think it would be worth it," Peter answered honestly. "I mean, this failed once. What's the use of failing again?" He hated himself so much right then. He wanted to die for it, for all the mistakes he had made when he was with her, for not being good enough. He cast a bitter glance at her. Was she crying, or was it the precipitation? Maybe it was all the same, anyway. 

"I don't know." She paused. "But wasn't it nice while it lasted?" she asked, unsure. Mary Jane's eyes lowered to his, pleading_. Please don't tell me these past months meant nothing to you. Lie to me, but don't say it. _

Peter met her eyes for the first time in long minutes. How could he explain that it had been the best three months of his life? How could he manage to express that he had lived and breathed for their relationship? Would she be able to see that it had been the sun in the center of his black hole? 

"Yeah. It was nice," he responded, his words a shadow to his true emotion. He talked in that cool, untouchable way now that meant he was beyond pain and only numb like the winter night. "But it was all make-believe."

"What was?" she asked fearfully.

"Our relationship was. We imagined for so long that it would work. But the days of pretending are over," Peter said coldly. The words echoed inside his head. _Over. Over. We are over. There is no more Peter and Mary Jane. Now it is Peter, Mary Jane, separated. She will never be my lover again. I will never kiss her again. She will never become Mary Jane Watson-Parker, like she did in my imagination. I have lost her, and it is my own fault. _

"Yeah," she agreed. "It was… just doomed from the start. We never would have-" And that was when she lost all self-control and started to sob in deep, gasping breaths. 

Peter watched Mary Jane, shocked and aloof. He could not bring himself to stop her. Mary Jane's arms were wrapped around herself because no one else would hold her, and her screams of anguish were for him, but he made no move. Peter knew that if he did, he could never look back; if he took one step closer, he would lose it, too. He would not allow himself to be seduced by her tears, though it was all he wanted.

"Why? Why didn't it goddamn work?" she cried out, choking. Her voice echoed in his brain's caverns and down the city sewers, shuddering. "We… we were perfect for each other. Why, then, was it all useless? Why?" 

"Mary Jane-" he started.

She suddenly was upon him. Her hand gripped his shirt collar, shortening his breath as she pulled his face down to hers. The streetlamp dimmed and flickered again, as though it had been startled by her sudden outburst. "I loved you with all of myself. Why wasn't that enough?"

"I don't know," he gasped, tearing himself away savagely with an urgency to escape her eyes. "I don't know!" The snow fell from his hair as he shook her off, backing up into the lamp and slipping a little on the thin layer of snow that just barely covered the sidewalk. 

"We just weren't meant," she said dully. She drifted towards Peter. He looked away, terrified of Mary Jane. He had never seen her so passionate, so furious. He had never seen her cry like that. He had never been so afraid of a person in his life. 

"I suppose," he replied, feigning indifference. She would never understand him. 

"But I can't let you go yet," she whispered. Her voice was muffled by the rain. "I can't let what we have go. I love you too much." _Yes, too much for our own good. _

"And I love you, Mary Jane," he confessed, "more than ever before. I will never stop loving you, not ever."

She cried out once more, the shrillness of her voice piercing all of him. "Then why must this end, Peter, if we love each other? Maybe I'm right, and we were just not meant in the long run, but why can't we just fake it for now while we're still so close to each other? Why should we give up the love we have for each other?" The lamp shuddered. 

"So we might save what little we have. Mary Jane, we can pretend like we did for three months, but we will not work out. We are too different. If we remain involved with each other, we will both end up getting hurt and learning to hate each other. We'll just make everything worse. It's just best to stop now where we are so we don't ruin anything."

"I could never hate you, Peter."

"But don't you see, Mary Jane?" he argued ardently. "You hated me when I didn't show up for dinner, and when I left you alone in bed at night. Those were the worst moments of my life, when you despised me, when I thus despised myself. If we dated more, it would continue. You would become even angrier with me, and I would hate myself more. Eventually we would leave off on bitter terms." 

"We could try again, start over," she begged him. "It wouldn't be the same. We could change things."

"No. We're too enslaved to situations to deny it, to stop it from happening again. I cannot help being drawn away and leaving you alone," Peter told her insistently. _Don't push it. Don't push me any more, please. This hurts enough to know that I cannot be what you want. I'm not the perfect boyfriend!_

"Yes, you can!" she persisted. "No one is forcing you to run off and be Spider-man and save the world. You could let it go, sometimes. You deserve a little break every once in a while anyways." Her voice fell on the last note as her emotions spilled out. She knew immediately as his eyes drew more into his face that she had made a grave mistake. She could not change who Peter was, just as she could not change her own expectations. 

Peter bit his lip and clenched his fists. "I can't stop. I can't stop, Mary Jane. You should know that. I just… need to do this. My soul wants me to do it. I can't help it." He swallowed hard. "Let's just stop while we're still ahead, Mary Jane. We really will just make it worse." Now he was crying, too. It was all hopeless, the whole mess. His love life was a disaster, and he knew now that he could never love someone again. Spider-man would always get in the way, every single goddamn time. _I have to be Spider-man. _

"I still can't understand your hopelessness," Mary Jane rasped. "I wish you could have more faith."

"I wish so, too," Peter said. "But I can't. That's the way I am. And you can't change who a person is." His eyes met her own. "You cannot change who I am." 

"Neither can you change me," Mary Jane answered. 

"And that's why we're doomed," Peter told her. He rubbed his hands together in an attempt to keep them warm, but he was already so damn cold. Mary Jane thoughtfully, helplessly, began to pace very slowly across the pavement.

She turned her back to him, walking. "It was all pretend, wasn't it?" she said as the realization dawned on her. "You may have taken off your suit some nights to give the appearance of not being Spider-man, but you still were. The suit isn't Spider-man. It's you who is Spider-man. Even when the costume was gone, Spider-man still was always and will be hiding under your skin." She turned back to him, spinning on her heel. "The other night, when you said you were all mine, and Spider-man was unattached, that wasn't true, was it? Because even when it's only in the back of your mind, you're still Spider-man." She stopped in her tracks to hear him answer.

"You're right. Yes," he replied. He hadn't thought of it that way. _Our relationship never did mean anything. _

_Help me. I am nothing! I never had him. I never will have him. Peter is forever lost to me. This is the end of us, though was there ever a beginning? she thought with a furious passion. "It really was all make-believe," she whispered, meeting his eyes. Silence fell suddenly, broken only by the faint honks of distant vehicles. The two squirmed nervously as the light dimmed._

"So, goodbye, I guess," Peter said oddly. The words felt so strange on his tongue, as if he were chewing rubber tires.

"Yeah. Goodbye, Peter," she said in an equally estranged voice. She reached out and cupped his face in her hands, resting her forehead against his own. His eyes were so sad, so longing, so regretful. Mary Jane's lashes fluttered closed, and the cooled snow fell off of them. 

Peter sighed, though his heart thundered wildly with pain and grief. He took her in his arms and let his palms roam over the back of her soaked shirt. At this she let out a soft sigh. He lost it. His heart gave way and his lips met hers passionately, drinking her up, trying to make up for three months lost. They were suddenly just like the actors on the billboard, hot flesh against hot flesh, unable to contain emotion that was there but broken.

Mary Jane broke away. "You were right," she coughed out in between her tears. "I can hate you. I hate you now for leaving me only with memories of our faulty relationship and the blood we let for each other. I hate you, Peter! I hate you for being so righteous all the time, and for being sentimental, and for being too good for me, for breaking my heart, and for being so near perfect and making me love you. Oh, Peter!" With that she turned and fled.

The streetlamp died as she vanished in the distance, leaving Peter in the dark with the billboard. 

A taxi cab halted at the corner next to him as the light became red. The window was opened and the black man with blue dreadlocks inside tapped his cigarette out of the window. He flicked on the radio. His wet eyes turned onto Peter, who looked dazed and confused as the song played.

_So long, sweet summer.  
I stumbled upon you and gracefully basked in your rays.  
So long, sweet slumber.  
I fell into you; now you're gracefully falling away.  
  
Hey, thanks, thanks for that summer.  
It's cold where you're going. I hope that your heart is always warm.  
I gave you the best that I had.  
You passed on my letters and passed on the best that I had.  
  
_

_So long, sweet summer.  
I stumbled upon you and gracefully basked in your rays.  
So long, sweet slumber.  
I fell into you; now you're gracefully falling away._

_  
I hate the winter in Lexington._

"Yeah," he mouthed. It was then that he leaned up against the dead streetlamp and cried in deep breathless sobs, and the car drove away, leaving only an echo of the melody.

~~~

AN: I did not intend for this to be a song-fic, but I heard the song and thought of Peter and stuck it in. So sue me. Eh, never mind, don't sue me. The song is "Age Six Racer" by Dashboard Confessional. I just thought of "age six" relating to how that was the age (or thereabouts) when Peter realized he loved Mary Jane. That's just nifty! And the song fits so well. "I gave you the best that I had" and "now you're gracefully falling away" just were perfect!

I hope that this was a pretty important, significant, and enjoyable chapter. It was meant to be pretty intense and emotional. I hope that this didn't seem to come out of nowhere. There was a lot leading up to this. There was the whole thing about Peter never being around, and MJ saying a lot of angry things to him, etc. I hope everyone gets the whole situation and why they're breaking up. I hope it was clear, but in case not, here are the straight facts. 

Peter is Spider-man, of course, so he's not always around. Sometimes he has to run off, or miss dates, or such. He's not such a steady, dependant character because he's Spider-man. MJ is so in love with him, but that sort of thing really gets under her skin. She cannot accept it; she wants Peter to be with her all the time. That was really explored in the brief chapter 5. (Basically, it's all because MJ had such a childhood where she was never loved; now she intensely craves love and needs a lot of it to make up for what she did not get before, so she is easily offended when Peter can't come to dinner or such.) Peter feels such a need to be Spider-man; he can't give it up for her. Mary Jane, on the other hand, does not want him to be Spider-man because she feels that it takes away from them and their time together. Conflicting interests and no will to change are the source of the problem. 

Chapter 8 has been written over a long period of time. I actually wrote it before any other chapter, but I only did about half of it (starting from when MJ ran into the street; the first half was originally intended for chapter 7, but I didn't care to do a cliffhanger!). Then I did chapter 9, then chapters 1, 2, and 3, and finally 7, then 4 and back to finish 8. I'm confusing myself. 

I have always heard MJ referred to as "Mary Jane Watson-Parker" when she's wed to Peter. If that's how it is in the comics, so be it. That's fine. I think it has a ring to it, and I think she's the kind of girl who won't give up her name. 

This is by no means the end! Chapter 9 is a-coming, though I will need more time to really complete it (as I said, I started, but I want to review and revise it). Chapter 8, however, was my baby, so I really, really would love your reviews! Okay? Please, please review. I love all my readers! I got 50 reviews!!!! 


	9. Rooftop Rebirth

**Days of Pretending**

Rated PG-13

_Chapter 9: Rooftop Rebirth_

_So, he thought to himself as he closed another photo album, __look where I am now. _

Peter had spent days and days pouring over photographs of his childhood, photographs that seemed to have too many pictures of Mary Jane, yet not enough. They were all a little faded from age, from sitting out on the counter at his old house, from simply being looked at repeatedly. There were pictures from kindergarten recitals, little Mary Jane's head at the back of the class, with the other kids whose names ended in "W" or maybe "Y" and "Z." There were some pictures of them standing together, smiling, but they never really touched. Those were the one that made Peter cry, because that was when he had unconditionally loved her, before he was Spider-man. Those were the times when he had really known no bounds to his love. 

Peter did not know how many boxes of tissue he had used before finally resorting to toilet paper. He had used up all the tissues in the house.

The other pictures made him depressed more than tearful. They smiled in each other's arms, cheek to cheek, hands clasped. They seemed to be outside a lot, maybe in the park, with the wild red leaves blowing around and melting in with Mary Jane's hair. The pictures were beautiful, but that in itself pained him. They acted like they were happy and thought that they were happy. Peter could not bear to look at them for long, because they reminded him of three months that he had lived lying to himself. _Were we doomed in this picture? Were we doomed in this one? We did not know three months ago that we would end up with nothing. _

Peter closed the last album, wondering why he even looked at the images when he knew they would shred his poor heart in a merciless manner. A wretched disease whispered in his brain with black shriveled lips. It was a hopeless, dreadful feeling that told him he would never get over Mary Jane. He would never forget the way she had looked into his eyes so many times with passion, the sensuality of her lips upon his, how she would pull of his mask and toss it to the side. He remembered throwing a blanket on the grass and feeding her strawberries under the starlight and sleeping with cooling coffee forgotten on the table. So many things had happened but now were lost, because they were dead.

Peter did not know why he spent time on such memories, haunted images and sensations that rolled through his body. He set down the album next to him and rose, heading for the kitchen area. He opened a cabinet, his reddened eyes scanning the contents. 

Harry had been gathering an assortment of liquor since his father had passed away; Harry himself only used it when he was desperate, so it was the unwritten rule of the house that it was for emergencies only. The stash was hidden where no one could find it. The secret hoard was particularly put in a high place where the short, small Aunt May would not discover it when she went on a motherly cleaning rampage. The fact that it was meant to be kept a secret made Peter feel all the more guilty when he picked a bottle of vodka up; he hated to keep things from people. But it was getting easier. 

He dragged the thing back to the couch and plopped himself next to the abandoned photo album. Peter stared at the oddly-colored liquid, the rusty red of the alcohol reminding him of sweet caramel, which was innocent and pure. Sweet, pure vodka - there was no harm in it. It wouldn't be so bad to take a few drinks. It would help. 

"If there was ever a time for alcohol, it would be now," he told himself, and picked it up. 

An hour later found Peter on the couch staring blankly at the ceiling, his blue eyes vacant and bloodshot. His head was empty. If a thought came to his head, it disappeared into the void of his mind. He felt so dazed and dumb, but it was better that way, because he could not feel anything in the silence. The door creaked open, and Harry entered, carrying a bag of groceries. "Peter, I got some food," he said with a faint smile. When Peter did not respond, Harry inched towards the couch, setting his package down on a chair on the way. 

"Peter?" Harry asked worriedly. 

"I'm not hungry," said Peter without blinking or flinching. His voice was hoarse and shaky, as if he weren't quite connected to it. The dark haired young man seated himself on the chair adjacent to Peter. At the moment that he was seated, Harry noticed the significantly emptied vodka bottle, and his stomach dropped.

"So, bad day," Harry commented roughly, rubbing at his temples and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. 

"Bad day, bad week, bad month. Bad everything. Bad life," Peter replied in a few broken phrases. His voice was monotone. "Same thing." He still did not move. 

"I see," said Harry. He leaned back. "C'mon, Peter. It's not going to do any good laying there. Have something to eat, huh? Liven up a little." When Peter did not respond at all, Harry insisted, "You'll be okay, Pete. Tomorrow's another day. C'mon."

"You don't get it," Peter argued. He felt his eyes water up, lingering at the cusps of his eyelids. "It will be the same tomorrow." There was a silent pause when he tried to contain his sorrow, but he could not. He sobbed out unexpectedly, making Harry jump. The tears released, spiraling down his face, smoothly flowing over his cheekbones. "I'm not going to be okay, because I lost her." He cried out again, his breath hitching, the tears running crystal down his face. 

"You broke up with Mary Jane?" Harry asked, his brows knitting together. 

"No," Peter replied, sniffling. "I don't think we were ever together-" he started to explain, but he started to cry again, and Harry couldn't understand the garbled words he choked out. He didn't think he would be able to get it at all, even if he did hear the words. 

Peter's eyes slammed shut in his pain as if to block off the rest of the tears that came. "Harry," Peter went on, slightly more composed. "Harry, Harry, Harry," he gasped, struggling to find the words to say, only thinking of the fact that his friend was near, and how much he needed someone right then and there, and how good it felt to know that at least he had Harry still, if not Mary Jane.

"I'm still in love with her. I'll always love her. I'll never get over her, Harry. I can't take it. Help me, Harry, tell me what to do," Peter whispered with slurred words. He finally stirred, his muscles moving for the first time in over half an hour, and he rolled over onto his stomach, his wet eyes meeting Harry's. Peter smudged his tears with his fist. "Harry," he said with a hiccup, "I don't know what to do."

"Here's a start. Don't drink any more, okay?" Harry reprimanded him, picking up the bottle and putting it back. "It's making you overly emotional." 

"Well, I need to cry," Peter responded, hoisting his upper torso up weakly. He shifted to a sitting position. He wiped his still streaming eyes and felt his throat tighten up again. Harry came over with a class of cold water and handed it to his drunken friend. 

"What's this for?" Peter asked, looking at it with his head cocked. 

"Just to get something non-alcoholic in you," Harry explained with a shrug. "How long have you been drinking?" 

Peter looked at the clock and forgot how to read it. "I don't know." 

Harry sighed. "Drink the water, Pete," he commanded, and Peter proceeded to do so. Once he had drained the glass, Harry asked, "What happened?" 

Peter's face fell, and he looked at the ground. "I don't know. Conflicting interests, or something like that. God, I don't know anymore. It's so hard to explain." He looked up to Harry's eyes. "I'm never going to be over her."

Harry shifted in his sear uncomfortably. "Neither will I."

It was at that moment that Peter remembered how Harry had dated Mary Jane as well. The fleeting look in Harry's eyes was one of slight regret, nostalgia, and perhaps deja vu. "I'm sorry," Peter apologized for stirring up the negative emotions in his friend. 

Harry waved off his friend with a hand. "Listen, Pete. There's no need to be sorry for me. I'm not the one crying in a drunken stupor on the couch," he said, attempting a joke. Harry's eyes twinkled. It worked; Peter broke into a smile and chuckled, laughing at his own stupidity. 

When Peter had regained his composition, Harry continued on a more serious note, "Mary Jane is no longer mine. Though I'll always love her, I am not the one who has her heart. It's not me she wants, but you. I don't know what happened between the two of you to cause this supposed 'break-up,' but Mary Jane will always be yours. She always has been, even when she hasn't known it." 

Peter wiped his eyes for the millionth time that night. "You're so sure," he said, baffled.

"Of course I'm sure. And I'm right, you know," Harry said, rising to stare down at Peter. "Think about it, Pete. I have no idea what happened between you and Mary Jane, but you both love each other, and I think that's enough to get you over whatever happened." Harry headed for the kitchen area to put away the milk and fruit from the store in the refrigerator. 

"You don't understand. You don't know it all," Peter replied, knowing he was unable to explain to Harry about Spider-man, and his own limitations, and what he could not do for her. "You can't understand everything."

Harry turned back to face his friend, leaning on the table. "Of course I don't understand. But I don't have to understand it all. It's simple. You love Mary Jane, don't you?" 

Peter closed his eyes, just thinking of her everything. "Yes. I love her so much."

"There you go. Then get her back," Harry said bluntly, turning back to the refrigerator and setting the sliced lunch meat on one of the shelves. 

Peter's eyes opened. He watched Harry move across the room, tossing the empty grocery bag in the trash can, organizing things, wiping off the counter. "Thanks, Harry," he said with a slight hiccup.  

~~

Meanwhile, across the city, Mary Jane was having other thoughts. Her thoughts were darker and deeper, and she did not know how to react to them. It was a very doomed, depressed feeling, as if the walls of her bedroom were closing in on her as she attempted at slumber. Peter was gone from her life now. He was her "ex-boyfriend." Just that alone sent an evil shiver up her spine. She hated the way it felt. 

She sat up with a vengeance and slammed her hand on the light switch near her bed, turning on the lamp and shooing away the darkness. Bitterly, she yanked up the covers to her chin and felt the tears well up behind her eyes. Mary Jane sniffled, not knowing if she could take the idea of not being with Peter. 

_I want him still, more than ever before. I need him, deep inside of my heart. I cannot ever let go of him, her brain screamed in agony, writhing. __Why can't we go on? It's my own fault. It's because I am a fool, because I cannot accept Spider-man inside of him. I cannot learn to live with his gift, his curse, his faults, his lack of perfection. What is wrong with me? She fell out of bed, thumping on her knees on the carpet, wincing. Her flesh crawled with bugs. _

Mary Jane wandered to the kitchen, deciding to make some tea to calm her nerves. As the kettle whistled, she was still lost in her heart's wonderings.  _I need to get over the fact that he's Spider-man. I need to forget it. I need to get over it. But why can't I? Am I too needy, too clingy to understand and accept that he can't be there 100% of the time? She poured the water and rummaged in the cupboard for a teabag. __Wouldn't it be better to have him some of the time rather than not at all? _

"I want to try again," she whispered to her mug of hot water. She stirred it with her finger. She had not found any teabags. "I still need you. I want you back. I want to forget that it ever happened so we can start anew." 

_Peter, she thought, collapsing into a chair, __Peter, what if I could forget that you were Spider-man? What if I could love Spider-man as a part of you, like I loved him before? He is a part of you, all your good together. She nearly did a double-take as something greater than she could understand hit her. __Spider-man is not evil. He is not out to get us. He is the goodness in you, the part that saves children, the part that loves humanity, the symbol and strength of the city. I should love him, because you are that man, Spider-man. He is not your weakness, but your beauty. He is not your cruelty to me or your indifference, but your passion for mankind. He is not the hate in our relationship, but the love in the world. _

She could no longer feel envy for him. She could no longer hold a grudge against him. Because though Peter's absence made her suffer, Spider-man presence protected her. They were not separate, but one. She had to accept them both, or neither at all. And the more she thought, the easier it was to betray her prior aches and fall back in love with them both.

~~

"Take care of the last customer of the day, young lady," said the fat man behind the stove with his thick accent. "And then you're good to go. Maria is closing tonight." He wiped his greasy hands on his apron, his wet eyes flitting away from Mary Jane, much to her relief. She did not like him, the way he looked at her like she was a piece of meat, the way he seemed to hire only women and no men. 

"Thanks, Enrique," Mary Jane said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "What table?"

"Twenty-nine," he answered, and returned to scraping dried crust off the stove. Mary Jane drew out her notebook thoughtlessly and heartlessly from her apron and wandered over to the booth in the far corner, her heart not quite in her job. She didn't even see anyone in it until she was right up next to it.

"May I-" she began, but she stopped. "Peter?" 

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. His heart was racing, his pulse pounding, the heat radiating from every part of his body as sheer, skittish, horse-like nervousness wracked his whole self. "I'm not here to eat," Peter said in a voice that was much too steady to be his own.  

"I…I didn't think so," she answered, sliding into the booth next to him. It was a good thing she sat. She felt shaky, like her knees might snap at any moment. Mary Jane felt suddenly like she could tell him a million things, like she could pour out her heart to him in apology and love and desperation. But she didn't know where to start. There was too much to say all at once. If she spoke, it would come out garbled. 

Peter somehow managed to speak. "I… I'm sorry," he whispered, interrupting the quiet, his gaze fixed on the napkin dispenser.

"Me, too," she admitted. "I never should have said those things about hating you."

"Those words you said were justified, within reason. I don't grudge you them." he replied distantly, still looking at something else other than her. It still stung to remember what she had said, those awful things about how she couldn't accept him and love all of him, those harsh words that bit repeatedly, even after they were long dead. "But I was so wrong to do what I did."

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused. "I…I was cruel. I blamed you for us not working out." Mary Jane's voice lowered as she scanned the diner for listening ears. "Everything negative that has happened has been my fault," she confessed, leaning forward in her seat, resting her elbows on the table. 

"For me to not accept your identity as Spider-man was something vicious. I just realized that you and Spider-man are not two different people vying for the same body, good versus evil. It's just a single person's good side versus their second good side. You were not wrong in leaving me once in a while; Peter, you were going off to save children. You were working for goodness, being civil, and using what power you could to make the world right. How could I be so selfish to let you not be that? How can I hog all of your wonderful self for me and not let you share it with the world?" She paused. "There's nothing wrong with being Spider-man, like I thought. There's something beautiful in it. I just didn't realize what you were saying to me all along." 

Peter couldn't think of anything to say to her then.

Mary Jane swallowed her pride. "I was a jealous child in hating Spider-man, who is such a part of you. And I am so sorry for that. But I will never hate you again. I never can hate you again, because you were only doing what you thought would better for the rest of the world. "

Peter met her eyes. "This was not all your fault," he told her. "Don't let yourself think that it was."

"But you did no wrong. Who else can be blamed?" Mary Jane countered.

Peter shook his head at her. "But that's not true. There was one time when I left you for real, and I did not have Spider-man to hide behind. It was that night three weeks ago in the snow. I was a moron, such a moron, in being so hopeless, in not willing to try again. What did I think I was doing in running away from you? Did I think that things would be better if we were apart, unable to touch each other? Was I saving you, saving us from each other? No. You said you didn't want that in the first place."

"No. No, I just want to be with you, Peter." She laid her hands on top of his, and fire raged through his skin from not having touched her in so long.

"And I want to be with you, Mary Jane." He felt her squeeze his hand for reassurance; and it worked.

Peter continued, "I don't know what I was thinking when I said that we were over. I thought you could never love me." He swallowed hard. 

"And then I realized that it wasn't you that this was all about. It was about me. It was about if I could accept Spider-man or not. I didn't want to accept him, and that made the both of us hate him more. If I could accept Spider-man, that meant I could accept myself and love myself for who I was. And one must love himself before anyone else loves him. That's what this is all about."  

"Peter-"

"I was afraid of myself; I didn't know anything." Peter shook his head and hid his face with his hands as he wept. "I am so sorry, Mary Jane, for making you my guinea pig. I didn't mean it." Her name sounded so good on his tongue, but not the sobbing tone in which he said it.

She shushed him immediately, disliking his tears. "Don't cry. Don't kick yourself over this," she told him, resting a hand on his back. Instinct drew him into her arms, and he cried onto her shoulder, his hands on his lap. Mary Jane kissed Peter's temple gently. "We were both in the wrong in so many ways. But it's all right now. Let's just kiss and make up, then, Peter." Her eyes sparked. Not until after she had spoken did Mary Jane realize the double meaning.

Shyly, he looked up at her teary eyes and saw the twinkle there. He brought his lips upon hers hungrily; the touch almost ached after three weeks without her. The only thought in his head was not of regret, not of sorrow or guilt; he lost all that in the kiss. The only thing Peter could think about was that everything would be fine as long as he was against Mary Jane's lips.  

They broke apart, gasping. "Are you… saying you want me back?" he asked her. 

"Yes."

"Even after everything, you want me back? Even after I hurt you, after we hurt ourselves because of each other?" She nodded.  "But we might not work out, you have to remember. We have such conflicting needs, conflicting desires, conflicting lives," Peter said. "I can't-"

"I know. But we still love each other. We'll have to make do with that, won't we?" Mary Jane replied. "We just have to be patient with each other, and remember that we aren't perfect." She smiled with tears in her eyes and held his hands in her own and kissed his cheek tenderly. "I love you – all of you – too much to give up so easily."

He sighed audibly and let his cheekbone rest against her soft pink lips, red-rimmed eyes closing thoughtfully. "I love you, too, even though it might not seem like it sometimes. I really do," he insisted. 

"I know." 

His eyes lifted suddenly. "Let's get out of here," Peter suggested lightly in a voice that suggested mystery and romance. Mary Jane smirked at Peter for the first time in a long time, and the smile really reached her eyes and glistened there, and she had never felt better in her life, not even when she had first loved Peter. It was new and fresh and real now, and there was hope in the world after all. 

"Okay," she agreed. They rose from their seat, disentangling themselves from each other only to tangle each other up again as they latched arms and left the diner behind. Mary Jane's apron and notepad were discarded on the table behind them.

The door swung open and they emerged just as the streetlamps came on and the horizon darkened and six o'clock was struck on the watches of the city. 

They made quite a sight, the redhead in her bright costumed uniform and the bleary-eyed student with his faded green high-collared sweater. They were everything out of the ordinary. Even weirder was how he met her eyes and nodded and turned down an alley with her in hand and disappeared from the view of the common people.

A minute or so later, a red-suited warrior streaked across the sky with another in his arms. Squinting, his cargo was a young woman, who seemed to not be in fear but rather in joy as she soared across the skyscrapers. There was laughter ringing in the air. 

"So," the masked hero said with a smile underneath his fake face, "you like dates like these?" She could hardly hear him for the wind whipping around his face. 

"Definitely," Mary Jane whispered, watching the streets like ribbons below them. Everything else seemed so far away right then, like they were untouchable. She felt like she was leaving the whole world behind, like she was becoming someone else as she hung there. All she had ever known was slowly fading away and the new reality was something more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. 

They spent the night counting stars on the rooftops and hoping that darkness would give them cover.

**The End**

~~ 

AN: And you have reached the end of "Days of Pretending." I hope you liked it! I hope it was an enjoyable journey, full of happiness, sadness, joy, wisdom, and tears. I hope it touched you. It touched me, somehow. *sniffle* I was writing it and sometimes it made me want to cry because I felt so awful for my characters. Peter and Mary Jane, please forgive me for torturing you so. Please review and tell me what you think about this. I really need reviews to pump me up. 

I was trying to do the whole story without little breakers (~~), but I really needed them this chapter. Aw, oh well! And in case anyone was wondering, I prefer using "Mary Jane" and "Peter" because "MJ" sounds a little cheesy to me in the actual story and "Pete" reminds me of a stupid white horse that I ride, and it's just a funny connection that disturbs the way I write. (It's not a very romantic name, either.)  I only use "Pete" when Harry's talking because it's a sort of buddy-to-buddy name. I can't see Harry referring to him as "Peter." 

In case anyone noticed, I have a parallel structure in here that's kind of symbolic. Remember in chapter 2 how MJ and Peter met at the diner but MJ couldn't leave? It happens again in this story. And this time they could leave and go off wherever. That was meant to be a symbol; the first time, they couldn't go anywhere, sort of implying they were stuck (on their differences). This time, they were free of those things. Aren't I a little genius? 

Yeah, that's about all. This was my brainchild and my blood, sweat, and tears. Good God, review me! And goodbye.


End file.
